Southern  Branch 
of  the 

University  of  California 


Los  Angeles 


Form  L  1 


S5  5 


.  ! 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 

MAR  1 7  1924_ 


IOC  I 


X  ^ 


192;4 


19^ 


j^N2  3l92i 
^^Y  1  0  1926. 

JUN  1      i9i«i 
fjE€  1^ 

M4R  -^  8   1930 

MAY  13  19Si 

JUN  2      1930 


f' 


,f;.h[' 


?^ 


APP 


n 


i 


\  t- 


AUG  6      193#7.> 
aUN  1 7  1935) 


Form  L-9-2///12,'23 


&rrW/riJ '^tJalk.o'^  Qh.  :>C. 


'('  n~^r  ir 


^Torrv   U'  bain-trna  by  S^/~(,enr-ij('(f'iJncbh.cv/rh  LLJxiillb.i 


/»il« 


>-JiVl 


• 

1 

f 

1 

1 

4 


i 


s     »      <.      'c  ' 


TO 

AUGUSTINE    BIRRELL 

A    FHIEXD    OF    LONG    YEARS    AND    A    TRUE 

LOVER    OF    GEORGE    BORROW 

C.    K.    S. 


^ 


Oj 


^ 


PREFACE 


«i 


I  HAVE  to  express  my  indebtedness  first  of  all  to  the 
executors  of  Henrietta  MacOubrey,  George  Borrow's 

"?  stepdaughter,  who  kindly  placed  Borrow's  letters 
and  manuscripts  at  my  disposal.  To  the  survivor  of 
these  executors,  a  lady  who  resides  in  an  English 
provincial  town,  I  would  particularly  wish  to  render 

rj.   fullest  acknowledgment  did  she  not  desire  to  escape 

r{  all  publicity  and  forbid  me  to  give  her  name  in  print. 
I  am  indebted  to  Sir  William  Robertson  Nicoll  with- 
out whose  kindly  and  active  intervention  I  should 
never  have  taken  active  steps  to  obtain  the  material 
to  which  this  biography  owes  its  principal  value.  I 
am  under  great  obligations  to  Mr.  Herbert  Jenkins, 

(§^  the  publisher,  in  that,  although  the  author  of  a  success- 
ful biography  of  Borrow,  he  has,  with  rare  kindliness, 
brought  me  into  communication  with  Mr.  Wilfrid 
J.  Bowring,  the  grandson  of  Sir  John  Bowring.  To 
Mr.  Wilfrid  Bowring  I  am  indebted  in  that  he  has 
handed  to  me  the  whole  of  Borrow's  letters  to  his 
grandfather.  I  have  to  thank  Mr.  James  Hooper  of 
Norwich  for  the  untiring  zeal  with  which  he  has 
unearthed  for  me  a  valuable  series  of  notes  including 


vi  PREFACE  \ 

certain  interesting  letters  concerning  Borrow.  Mr. 
Hooper  has  generously  placed  his  collection,  with 
which  he  at  one  time  contemplated  writing  a 
biography  of  Borrow,  in  my  hands.  I  thank  Dr. 
Aldis  Wright  for  reading  my  chapter  on  Edward  Fitz- 
Gerald  ;  also  Mr.  W.  H.  Peet,  Mr.  Aleck  Abrahams, 
and  Mr.  Joseph  Shay  lor  for  assistance  in  the  little 
known  field  of  Sir  Richard  Phillips's  life.  I  have 
further  to  thank  my  friends,  Edward  Clodd  and 
Thomas  J.  Wise,  for  reading  my  proof-sheets.  To 
Theodore  Watts- Dunton,  an  untiring  friend  of  thirty 
years,  I  have  also  to  acknowledge  abundant  obligations. 

C.  K.  S. 


CONTENTS 

FACE 

Pjieface,  ..........  V 

Introduction,    .........         xv 

CHAPTER    I 

CAPTAIN    BORROW    OF    THE    WEST    NORFOLK    MILITIA,  ,  .  1 

CHAPTER    U 
sorrow's  mother,       ...... 


•  • 


CHAPTER   HI 

JOHN    THOMAS    liORKOW, 


12 


18 


CHAPTER   IV 

A    WANDERING    CHILDHOOD,   .......  36 

CHAPTER    V 

GEORGE    BORROW'S    NORWICH — THE    GURNEYS,  ...  54 

CHAPTER   VI 

GEORGE  sorrow's  NORWICH THE  TAYLORS,      ...     63 

CHAPTER   Vn 

GEORGE    BORROw's    NORWICH THE    GRAMMAR    SCHOOL,       .  .  70 

vii 


viii     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

CHAPTER   VIII 

FAGB 

GEORGE    BORROW's    NORWICH THE    LAWYER's    OFFICE,        .  .  79 

CHAPTER  IX 

SIR    RICHARD    PHILLIPS,  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  87 

CHAPTER   X 

'FAUSTUs'    and    '  ROMANTIC  ballads,' 101 

CHAPTER   XI 

'celebrated    trials'    and    JOHN    THURTELL,  .  .  .112 

CHAPTER   XII 

BORROW    AND    THE    FANCY,    .  .  .  .  .  .  .126 

CHAPTER   XIII 

EIGHT  YEARS    OF    VAGABONDAGE,    ......  133 

CHAPTER   XIV 

SIR   JOHN    BOWRING,       ........  138 

CHAPTER    XV 

BORROW    AND    THE    BIHLE    SOCIETY,  .....  153 

CHAPTER  XVI 

ST.  PETERSBURG    AND    JOHN    P,  HASFELD,  .  .  .  .162 

CHAPTER   XVII 

THE    MANCHU    BIBLE '  TARGUM  ' '  THE    TALISMAN,'  .  .  169 


CONTENTS  ix 

CHAPTER  XVIII 

f  AGE 

THREE    VISITS    TO    SPAIN,  .  .  .  .  .  .  .179 

CHAPTER    XIX 

sorrow's    SPANISH    CIRCLE,    .......  201 

CHAPTER   XX 

MARY    BORROW,     .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .215 

CHAPTER   XXI 

'  THE  CHILDREN  OF  THE  OPEN  AIR,"   .....    226 

CHAPTER   XXII 

'  THE    BIBLE    IN    SPAIN,""  .......  237 

CHAPTER   XXIII 

RICHARD    FORD,    .........  248 

CHAPTER  XXIV 

IN    EASTERN    EUROPE,   ........  260 

CHAPTER   XXV 

'  LAVENGRO,'  .........  275 

CHAPTER   XXVI 

A    VISIT    TO    CORNISH    KINSMEN,        ......  289 

CHAPTER   XXVII 

IN    THE    ISLE    OF    MAN,  .......  296 


X      GEOKGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

CHAPTER   XXVIII 

PAGE 

OULTON    BROAD    AND    YARMOUTH,  ......  304 

CHAPTER   XXIX 

IN    SCOTLAND    AND    IRELAND,  ......  320 

CHAPTER  XXX 

'  THE    ROMANY    RYE,'    ........  341 

CHAPTER  XXXI 

EDWARD    FITZGERALD,  .......  350 

CHAPTER  XXXII 

'  WILD  WALES,'      .........  364 

CHAPTER  XXXIII 

LIFE    IN    LONDON,  ........  379 

CHAPTER  XXXIV 

FRIENDS    OF    LATER    YEARS,  .  .  .  .  .  .  389 

CHAPTER  XXXV 

liORROw\s    UNPUBLISHED    WRITINGS,  .....  401 

CHAPTER  XXXVI      . 

HENRIETTA    CLARKE,     ........  413 

CHAPTER  XXXVII 

THE    AFTERMATH,  ........  434 


INDEX, 438 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 

FULL-PAGE  PLATES 

George  Borrow^  .....      Frontispiece 

A  photoffravure  portrait  from  the  painting  hy  Henry  Wyndham 
Phillips. 

PAGE 

The  Borrow  House,  Norwich,  .  .  .  .  .16 

Robert  Hawkes,  Mayor  of  Norwich  in   1824,  .  .       24 

From  the  painting  by  Benjamin  Haydon  in  St.  Andreiv's  Hall, 
Norwich. 

George  Borrow,  .  .  .  ,  .  .32 

From  Q  portrait  hy  his  brother,  John  Thomas  Borrov),  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery,  London. 

The  Erpingham  Gate  and  the  Grammar  School,  Norwich,  .        72 
William  Simpson,  .  .  .  .  .  .80 

From  a  portrait  by  Thomas  Phillips,  R.A.,  in  the  Black  Friars 
Hall,  Norv:lch. 

Friends  of  Borrow's  Early  Years — 

Sir  John  Bowring  in   1826,  .  .  .  .  9Q 

John  P.   Hasfeld  in   1835,  .  .  .  ^  9Q 

William  Taylor,            .  .  .  .  .  QQ 

Sir  Richard  Phillips,  .  .  .  .  QQ 


xii    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

PAGE 

The  Family  of  Jasper  Petulengro        .  .  .  .128 

Where  Borrow  Lived  in  Madrid,  ....      192 

The  Calle  dei,  Principe,  Madrid,  .  .  .  .192 

A  hitherto  Unpublished  Portrait  of  George  Borrow,  .     304 

Taken  in  the  garden  of  Mrs.  Simms  Reeve  of  Norwich  in  1848. 

OuLTON  Cottage  from  the  Broad,         ....     352 
The  Summer-House,  Oulton,  as  it  is  to-dav,  .  .     352 

ILLUSTRATIONS  IN  TEXT 

George  Borrow's  Birthplace  at  Dumpling  Green,      .  .       35 

From  a  draxving  hy  Fortunino  Matania. 

Title-Pages  of  'Targum'  and  'The  Talisman,'  .  .     178 

Portion    of    a    Letter    from    George    Borrow   to   the    Rev. 

Samuel  Brandram,  .  .  .  .  .  .187 

Written  from  Madrid,  \2>th  May  1838. 

Facsimile  of  an    Account   of    George    Borrow's   Expenses   in 

Spain  made  out  by  the  Bible  Society,      .  .  .     190 

A  Letter  from  Sir  George  Villiers,  afterwards  Earl  of 
Clarendon,  British  Minister  to  Spain,  to  George 
Borrow,         .  .  .  .  .  .  .211 

Mrs.   Borrow' s  Copy  of  her  Marriage  Certificate,    .  .     222 

An  Application    for   a    Book    in   the    British    Museum,  with 

Borrow's  Signature,  .....     230 

A  Shekel,  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     244 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS  xiii 

I'AGE 

Title-Page  of  Basque  Translaiion   liv  Oteiza   of   tiik  Gospel 

OF  St.  Luke,  ......     247 

Title-Page  of  First  Edition  of  Romany  Translation  of  the 

Gospel  of  St.  Luke,  .....     247 

Two    Pages    from    Borrow's    Corrected     Proof     Sheets    of 

Romany  Translation  of  the  Gospel  of  St.  Luke,  .     247 

Inscriptions  in  Borrow's    Handwriting    on   his  Wife's  Copies 

OF  'The  Bible  in  Spain'  and  'Lavengro,'  .  .     275 

The  Original  Title-Page  of  '  Lavengro,'  .  .  .     280 

From  the  Manuscript  in  the  possession  of  the  Author  of  '  George 
Borroiv  and  his  Circle.' 

Facsimile  of  the  First  Page  of  'Lavengro,'  .  .  .     282 

From  the  Manuscript  in  the  possession  of  the  Author  of  '  George 
Borrow  and  his  Circle.' 

Runic  Stone  from  the  Isle  of  Man,    ....     302 

Facsimile    of    a    Communication    from    Charles    Darwin    to 

George  Borrow,      .  .  .  .  .  .318 

Facsimile  of    a    Page    of   the    Manuscript   of    'The    Romany 

Rve,'  .......     346 

From  the  Borroiv  Papers  in  the  possession  of  the  Author  of 
'  George  Borrow  and  his  Circle.' 

'Wild  Wales'  in  its  Beginnings,  ....     SG.'i 

Tioo  pages  from  one  of  George  Borrow's  Pocket-hooks  with  pen- 
cilled notes  made  on  his  journey  through  Wales. 

Facsimile  of  the  Title-Page  of  '  Wild  Wales,'  .  .     368 

From  the  original  Manuscript  in  the  possession  of  the  Author  of 
'  Georqe  Borrov  and  his  Cirrfr,' 


xiv    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 


PAGE 


Facsimile  of  the  First  Page  of  '  Wild  Wales/  .  .     370 

From  the  original  Manuscript  in  the  possession  of  the  Author  of 
'George  Borrow  and  his  Circle.' 

Facsimile  of  a  Poem  from  'Targum/    ....     403 

A  Translation  from  the  French  hy  George  Borroiv. 

Borrow  as  a  Professor  of  Languages — an  Advertisement,    .     409 

A    Page    of   the  Manuscript   of   Borrow's    '  Songs   of   Scan- 
dinavia'— an  unpublished  work,     .  .  .  .411 

A  Letter  from  Borrow  to  his  Wife  written  from  Rome  in 

his  Continental  Journey  of  1844,  .  .  .418 


INTRODUCTION 

It  is  now  exactly  seventeen  years  ago  since  I  pub- 
lished a  volume  not  dissimilar  in  form  to  this  under 
the  title  of  Charlotte  Bronte  and  her  Circle.  The  title 
had  then  an  element  of  novelty,  Dante  Gabriel  Ros- 
setti's  Dante  and  his  Circle,  at  the  time  the  only  book 
of  this  particular  character,  having  quite  another  aim. 
There  are  now  some  twenty  or  more  biographies 
based  upon  a  similar  plan.^  The  method  has  its 
convenience  where  there  are  earlier  lives  of  a  given 
writer,  as  one  can  in  this  way  differentiate  the  book 
from  previous  efforts  by  making  one's  hero  stand  out 
among  his  friends.  Some  such  apology,  I  feel,  is 
necessary,  because,  in  these  days  of  the  multiplica- 
tion of  books,  every  book,  at  least  other  than  a  work 
of  imagination,  requires  ample  apology.  In  Charlotte 
Bronte  and  her  Circle  I  was  able  to  claim  that,  even 
though  following  in  the  footsteps  of  Mrs.  Gaskell,  I 
had  added  some  four  hundred  new  letters  by  Charlotte 
Bronte  to  the  world's  knowledge  of  that  interesting 
woman,  and  still  more  considerably  enlarged  our  know- 
ledge of  her  sister  Emily.  This  achievement  has  been 
generously  acknowledged,  and  I  am  most  proud  of 
the  testimony  of  the  most  accomplished  of  living 
biographers.  Sir  George  Otto  Trevelyan,  who  once 
rendered  me  the  following  quite  spontaneous  tribute  : 

1  Ab  for  example,  Garrick  and  his  Circle  ;  Johnson  and  his  Circle  ;  Refolds 
and  his  Circle  ',  and  even  The  Empress  Eugenie  and  her  Circle. 

XV 


xvi      GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

We  have  lately  read  aloud  for  the  second  time  your  Bronte 
book  ;  let  alone  private  readings.  It  is  unique  in  plan  and  excel- 
lence, and  I  am  greatly  obliged  to  you  for  it.  Apart  from  the 
pleasure  of  the  book,  the  form  of  it  has  always  interested  me  as  a 
professional  biographer.  It  certainly  is  novel ;  and  in  this  case  I 
am  pretty  sure  that  it  is  right. 

With  such  a  testimony  before  me  I  cannot  hesitate 
to  present  my  second  biography  in  similar  form. 
In  the  case  of  George  Borrow,  however,  I  am  not  in  a 
position  to  supplement  one  transcendent  biography,  as 
in  the  case  of  Charlotte  Bronte  and  Mrs.  Gaskell.  I 
have  before  me  no  less  than  four  biographies  of  Borrow, 
every  one  of  them  of  distinctive  merit.     These  are  : 

Life,  Writings,  and  Correspondence  of  George  Borrozv.  Derived 
from  Official  and  other  Authentic  Sources.  By  William  I. 
Knapp,  Ph.D.,  LL.D.     2  vols.     John  Murray,  1899. 

George  Borrow:  The  Man  and  his  Woj-k.  By  R.  A.  J.  Wal- 
ling.    Cassell,  1908. 

The  Life  of  George  Borrow.  Compiled  from  Unpublished 
Official  Documents.  His  Works,  Correspondence,  etc.  By  Herbert 
Jenkins.     John  Murray,  1912, 

George  Borrow :  The  Man  and  his  Books.  By  Edward  Thomas. 
Chapman  and  Hall,  1912. 

All  of  these  books  have  contributed  something  of 
value  and  importance  to  the  subject.  Dr.  Kuapp'swork 
it  is  easiest  to  praise  because  he  is  dead.^  His  biography 
of  Borrow  was  the  effort  of  a  lifetime.  A  scholar  with 
great  linguistic  qualifications  for  writing  the  biography 
of  an  author  whose  knowledge  of  languages  was  one  of 

*  William  Ireland  Knapp  died  in  Paris  in  June  1908,  aged  seventy-four. 
He  was  an  American,  and  had  held  for  many  years  the  Chair  of  Modern 
Languages  at  Vassar  College.  After  eleven  years  in  Spain  he  returned  to 
occupy  the  Chair  of  Modern  Languages  at  Yale,  and  later  held  a  Professor- 
ship at  Chicago.  After  his  Life  of  Borrow  was  published  he  resided  in  Paris 
until  his  death. 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

his  titles  to  fame,  Dr.  Knapp  spared  neither  time  nor 
money  to  achieve  his  ])urpose.  Starting  with  an  article 
in  The  Chautauquan  31agazine  in  1887,  which  was 
reprinted  in  pamphlet  form,  Dr.  Knapp  came  to 
England — to  Norwich — and  there  settled  down  to  write 
a  Life  of  Borrow,  which  promised  at  one  time  to 
develop  into  several  volumes.  As  well  it  might,  for 
Dr.  Knapp  reached  Norfolk  at  a  happy  moment  for  his 
purpose.  Mrs.  MacOubrey,  Borrow's  stepdaughter, 
was  in  the  humour  to  sell  her  father's  manuscripts  and 
books.  They  were  offered  to  the  city  of  Norwich  ; 
there  was  some  talk  of  Mr.  Jeremiah  Coleman,  M.P., 
whose  influence  and  wealth  were  overpowering  in 
Norwich  at  the  time,  buying  them.  Finally,  a  very 
considerable  portion  of  the  collection  came  into  the 
hands  of  Mr.  Webber,  a  bookseller  of  Ipswich,  who 
later  became  associated  with  the  firm  of  Jarrold  of 
Norwich.  From  Webber  Dr.  Knapp  purchased  the 
larger  portion,  and,  as  his  bibliography  indicates  {Life, 
vol.  ii.  pp.  355-88),  he  became  possessed  of  sundry 
note-books  which  furnish  a  record  of  certain  of  Borrow's 
holiday  tours,  about  a  hundred  letters  from  and  to 
Borrow,  and  a  considerable  number  of  other  documents. 
The  result,  as  I  have  indicated,  was  a  book  that 
abounded  in  new  facts  and  is  rich  in  new  material.  It 
was  not,  however,  a  book  for  popular  reading.  You  must 
love  the  subject  before  you  turn  to  this  book  with  any 
zest.  It  is  a  book  for  your  true  Borrovian,  w^ho  is 
thankful  for  any  information  about  the  word-master,  not 
for  the  casual  reader,  who  might  indeed  be  alienated 
from  the  subject  by  this  copious  memoir.  The  result  was 
somewhat  discouraging.  There  were  not  enough  of  true 
Borrovians  in  those  years,  and  the  book  was  not  received 
too  generously.     The  two  volumes  have  gone  out  of 

h 


xviii    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

print  and  have  not  reached  a  second  edition.  Time 
however,  will  do  them  justice.  As  it  is,  your  good 
Borrow  lover  has  always  appreciated  their  merits.  Take 
Lionel  Johnson  for  example,  a  good  critic  and  a  master 
of  style.  After  saying  that  these  '  lengthy  and  rich 
volumes  are  a  monument  of  love's  labour,  but  not  of 
literary  art  or  biographical  skill,'  he  adds :  '  Of  his  over 
eight  hundred  pages  there  is  not  one  for  which  I  am 
not  grateful '  and  every  new  biographer  of  Borrow  is 
bound  to  re-echo  that  sentiment.  Dr.  Knapp  did  the 
spade  work  and  other  biographers  have  but  entered 
into  his  inheritance.  Dr.  Knapp's  fine  collection  of 
Borrow  books  and  manuscripts  was  handed  over 
by  his  widow  to  the  American  nation — to  the  Hispanic 
Society  of  New  York.  Dr.  Knapp's  biography  was 
followed  nine  years  later  by  a  small  volume  by  JNIr. 
R.  A.  J.  Walling,  whose  little  book  adds  considerably 
to  bur  knowledge  of  Borrow's  Cornish  relatives,  and  is 
in  every  way  a  valuable  monograph  on  the  author  of 
Lavengro.  Mr.  Herbert  Jenkins's  book  is  more  ambitious. 
Within  four  hundred  closely  printed  pages  he  has  com- 
pressed every  incident  in  Borrow's  career,  and  we  would 
not  quarrel  with  him  nor  his  publisher  for  calling  his  life 
a  '  definitive  biography  '  if  one  did  not  know  that  there 
is  not  and  cannot  be  anything  '  definitive  '  about  a  bio- 
graphy except  in  the  case  of  a  Master.  Boswell,  Lock- 
hart,  Mrs.  Gaskell  are  authors  who  had  the  advantage 
of  knowing  personally  the  subjects  of  their  biographies. 
Any  biographer  who  has  not  met  his  hero  face  to  face 
and  is  dependent  solely  on  documents  is  crippled  in  his 
undertaking.  Moreover,  such  a  biographer  is  always 
liable  to  be  in  a  manner  superseded  or  at  least  supple- 
mented by  the  appearance  of  still  more  documents. 
However,   Mr.  Jenkins's  excellent  biography  has  the 


INTRODUCTION  xix 

advantage  of  many  new  documents  from  Mr.  John 
Murray's  archives  and  from  the  Record  Office  Manu- 
scripts. His  work  was  the  first  to  make  use  of  the  letters 
of  George  Borrow  to  the  Bible  Society,  which  the 
Rev.  T.  H.  Darlow  has  published  as  a  book  under  that 
title,  a  book  to  which  I  owe  him  an  acknowledgment 
for  such  use  of  it  as  I  have  made,  as  also  for  permis- 
sion to  reproduce  the  title-page  of  Borrow's  Basque 
version  of  St.  Luke's  gospel.  There  only  remains 
for  me  to  say  a  word  in  praise  of  Mr.  Edward 
Thomas's  fine  critical  study  of  Borrow  which  was 
published  under  the  title  of  George  Borrow:  The 
Man  and  his  Books.  Mr.  Thomas  makes  no  claim 
to  the  possession  of  new  documents.  This  brings  me 
to  such  excuse  as  I  can  make  for  perpetrating  a  fifth 
biography.  When  JNIrs.  MacOubrey,  Borrow's  step- 
daughter, the  '  Hen.'  of  Wild  Wales  and  the  affectionate 
companion  of  his  later  years,  sold  her  father's  books  and 
manuscripts — and  she  always  to  her  dying  day  declared 
that  she  had  no  intention  of  parting  with  the  manu- 
scripts, which  were,  she  said,  taken  away  under  a  misap- 
prehension— she  did  not,  of  course,  part  with  any  of  his 
more  private  documents.  All  the  more  intimate  letters 
of  Borrow  were  retained.  At  her  death  these  passed  to 
her  executors,  from  whom  I  have  purchased  all  legal 
rights  in  the  publication  of  Borrow's  hitlierto  unpublished 
manuscripts  and  letters.  I  trust  that  even  to  those  who 
may  disapprove  of  the  discursive  method  with  which — 
solely  for  my  own  pleasure — 1  have  written  this  book, 
will  at  least  find  a  certain  biographical  value  in  the  many 
new  letters  by  and  to  George  Borrow  that  are  to  be 
found  in  its  pages.  The  book  has  taken  me  ten  years 
to  write,  and  has  been  a  labour  of  love. 


CHAPTER    1 

CAPTAIN  BORROW  OF  THE  WEST  NORFOLK  MILITIA 

George  Henry  Borrow  was  born  at  Dumpling 
Green  near  East  Dereham,  Norfolk,  on  the  5th  of 
July  1 803.  It  pleased  him  to  state  on  many  an  occa- 
sion that  he  was  born  at  East  Dereham. 

On  an  evening  of  July,  in  the  year  18 — ,  at  East  D ,  a 

beautiful  little  town  in  a  certain  district  of  East  Anglia,  I  first 
saw  the  light, 

he  writes  in  the  opening  lines  oi  Lavengro,  using  almost 
the  identical  phraseology  that  we  find  in  the  opening 
lines  of  Goethe's  Wahrhe'it  unci  Dichtung.  Here  is  a 
later  memory  of  Dereham  from  Lavengro  : 

What  it  is  at  present  I  know  not,  for  thirty  years  and  more 
have  elapsed  since  I  last  trod  its  streets.  It  will  scarcely  have 
improved,  for  how  could  it  be  better  than   it   was  ?     I  love  to 

think  on  thee,  pretty,  quiet  D ,  thou  pattern  of  an  English 

country  town,  with  thy  clean  but  narrow  streets  branching  out 
from  thy  modest  market-place,  with  their  old-fashioned  houses, 
with  here  and  there  a  roof  of  venerable  thatch,  with  thy  one  half- 
aristocratic  mansion,  where  resided  the  Lady  Bountiful — she,  the 
generous  and  kind,  who  loved  to  visit  the  sick,  leaning  on  her 
golden-headed  cane,  while  the  sleek  old  footman  walked  at  a 
respectful  distance  behind.  Pretty,  quiet  D ,  with  thy  vener- 
able church,  in  which  moulder  the  mortal  remains  of  England's 
sweetest  and  most  pious  bard. 


2     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Then  follows  an  exquisite  eulogy  of  the  poet  Cowper, 
which  readers  of  Lavengj^o  know  full  well.  Three 
years  before  Borrow  was  born  William  Cowper  died  in 
this  very  town,  leaving  behind  him  so  rich  a  legacy  of 
poetry  and  of  prose,  and  moreover  so  fragrant  a  memory 
of  a  life  in  which  humour  and  pathos  played  an  equal 
part.  It  was  no  small  thing  for  a  youth  who  aspired  to 
any  kind  of  renown  to  be  born  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  the  last  resting-place  of  the  author  of  The  Task. 

Yet  Borrow  was  not  actually  born  in  East  Dereham, 
but  a  mile  and  a  half  away,  at  the  little  hamlet  of 
Dumpling  Green,  in  what  was  then  a  glorious  wilder- 
ness of  common  and  furze  bush,  but  is  now  a  quiet 
landscape  of  fields  and  hedges.  You  will  find  the 
home  in  which  the  author  of  Lavengro  first  saw  the 
light  without  much  difficulty.  It  is  a  fair-sized  farm- 
house, with  a  long  low  frontage  separated  from  the 
road  by  a  considerable  strip  of  garden.  It  suggests  a 
prosperous  yeoman  class,  and  I  have  known  farm- 
houses in  East  Anglia  not  one  whit  larger  dignified  by 
the  name  of  '  hall.'  Nearly  opposite  is  a  pond.  The 
trim  hedges  are  a  delight  to  us  to-day,  but  you  must 
cast  your  mind  back  to  a  century  ago  when  they 
were  entirely  absent.  The  house  belonged  to  George 
Borrow's  maternal  grandfather,  Samuel  Perfrement, 
who  farmed  the  adjacent  land  at  this  time.  Samuel 
and  INIary  Perfrement  had  eight  children,  the  third  of 
whom,  Ann,  was  born  in  1772. 

In  February  1793  Ann  Perfrement,  aged  twenty- 
one,  married  Thomas  Borrow,  aged  thirty-five,  in  the 
Parish  Church  of  East  Dereham,  and  of  the  two 
children  that  were  born  to  them  George  Henry 
Borrow  was  the  younger.  Thomas  Borrow  was  the 
son  of  one  John  Borrow  of  St.  Cleer  in  Cornwall,  w^ho 


CAPTAIN  BOKROW  3 

died  before  this  child  was  born,  and  is  described  by  his 
grandson  ^   as   the  scion  '  of  an   ancient   but  reduced 

^  In  the  year  1870  Borrow  was  asked  for  material  for  a  biography  by  the 
editor  of  Men  of  the  Time,  a  publication  which  many  years  later  was  incor- 
porated in  the  present  Who's  Who.  He  drew  up  two  drafts  in  his  own 
handwriting,  which  are  so  interesting,  and  yet  vary  so  much  in  certain 
particulars,  that  we  are  tempted  to  print  both  here,  or  at  least  that  part  of 
the  second  draft  that  differs  from  the  first.  The  concluding  passages  of  both 
drafts  are  alike.  The  biography  as  it  stands  in  the  1871  edition  of  Meji  of 
the  Time  appears  to  have  been  compiled  from  the  earlier  of  these  drafts.  It 
must  have  been  another  copy  of  Draft  No.  1  that  was  forwarded  to  the 
editor : 

Draft  I. — George  Henry  Borrow,  born  at  East  Dereham  in  the  county 
of  Norfolk  in  the  early  part  of  the  present  century.  His  father  was  a 
military  officer,  with  whom  he  travelled  about  most  parts  of  the  United 
Kingdom.  He  was  at  some  of  the  best  schools  in  England,  and  also  for 
about  two  years  at  the  High  School  at  Edinburgh.  In  1818  he  was  articled 
to  an  eminent  solicitor  at  Norwich,  with  whom  he  continued  five  years.  He 
did  not,  however,  devote  himself  much  to  his  profession,  his  mind  being 
much  engrossed  by  philology,  for  which  at  a  very  early  period  he  had  shown 
a  decided  inclination,  having  when  in  Ireland  acquired  the  Irish  language. 
At  the  age  of  twenty  he  knew  little  of  the  law,  but  was  well  versed  in 
languages,  being  not  only  a  good  classical  scholar  but  acquainted  with 
French,  Italian,  Spanish,  all  the  Celtic  and  Gothic  dialects,  and  also  with 
the  peculiar  language  of  the  English  Romany  Chals  or  Gypsies.  This 
speech,  which,  though  broken  and  scanty,  exhibits  evident  signs  of  high 
antiquity,  he  had  picked  up  amongst  the  wandering  tribes  with  whom  he 
had  formed  acquaintance  on  a  wild  heath  near  Norwich,  where  they  were  in 
the  habit  of  encamping.  At  the  expiration  of  his  clerkship,  which  occurred 
shortly  after  the  death  of  his  fathei",  he  betook  himself  to  London,  and 
endeavoured  to  get  a  livelihood  by  literature.  For  some  time  he  was  a  hack 
author.  His  health  failing  he  left  London,  and  for  a  considerable  time 
lived  a  life  of  roving  adventure.  In  the  year  1833  he  entered  the  service  of 
he  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society,  and  being  sent  to  Russia  edited  at 
Saint  Petersburg  the  New  Testament  in  the  Manchu  or  Chinese  Tartar. 
AVhilst  at  Saint  Petersburg  he  published  a  book  called  Targum,  consisting 
of  metrical  translations  from  thirty  languages.  He  was  subsequently  for 
some  years  agent  of  the  Bible  Society  in  Spain,  where  he  was  twice 
imprisoned  for  endeavouring  to  circulate  the  Gospel.  In  Spain  he  mingled 
much  with  the  Caldre  or  Zincali,  called  by  the  Spaniards  Gitanos  or  Gypsies, 
whose  language  he  found  to  be  much  the  same  as  that  of  the  English 
Romany.  At  Madrid  he  edited  the  New  Testament  in  Spanish,  and  trans- 
lated the  Gospel  of  Saint  Luke  into  the  language  of  the  Zincali.  Leaving 
the  service  of  the  Bible  Society  he  returned  to  England  in  1839,  and  shortly 
afterwards  married  a  Suifolk  lady.     In  18il  he  published  The  Zincali,  or  an 


4     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Cornish  family,  tracing  descent  from  the  de  Burghs, 
and  entitled  to  carry  their  arms.'     This  claim,  of  which 

account  of  the  Gypsies  of  Spain,  with  a  vocabulary  of  their  language,  which 
he  proved  to  be  closely  connected  with  the  Sanskrit.  This  work  obtained 
almost  immediately  a  European  celebrity,  and  was  the  cause  of  many  learned 
works  being  published  on  the  continent  on  the  subject  of  the  Gypsies.  In 
1842  he  gave  to  the  world  The  Bible  in  Spain,  or  an  account  of  an  attempt  to 
circulate  the  Gospel  in  the  peninsula,  a  work  which  received  a  warm  and 
eloquent  eulogium  from  Sir  Robert  Peel  in  the  House  of  Commons.  In 
1844  he  was  wandering  amongst  the  Gypsies  of  Hungary,  Walachia,  and 
Turkey,  gathering  up  the  words  of  their  respective  dialects  of  the  Romany, 
and  making  a  collection  of  their  songs.  In  1851  he  published  Lavengro,  in 
which  he  gives  an  account  of  his  early  life,  and  in  1857  The  Eomany  Rye,  a 
sequel  to  the  same.  His  latest  publication  is  Wild  Wales.  He  has  written 
many  other  works,  some  of  which  are  not  yet  published.  He  has  an  estate 
in  Suffolk,  but  spends  the  greater  part  of  his  time  in  wandering  on  foot 
through  various  countries. 

■  ■•••■ 

Draft  II. — George  Henry  Borrow  was  born  at  East  Dereham  in  the 
county  of  Norfolk  on  the  5th  July  1803.  His  father,  Thomas  Borrow,  who 
died  captain  and  adjutant  of  the  AVest  Norfolk  Militia,  was  of  an  ancient 
but  reduced  Cornish  family,  tracing  descent  from  the  de  Burghs,  and  entitled 
to  carry  their  arms.  His  mother,  Ann  Perfrement,  was  a  native  of  Norfolk, 
and  descended  from  a  fiimily  of  French  Protestants  banished  from  France  on 
the  revocation  of  the  edict  of  Nantes.  He  was  the  youngest  of  two  sons. 
His  brother,  John  Thomas,  who  was  endowed  with  various  and  very  remark- 
able talents,  died  at  an  early  age  in  Mexico.  Both  the  brothers  had  the 
advantage  of  being  at  some  of  the  first  schools  in  Britain.  The  last  at  which 
they  were  placed  was  the  Grammar  School  at  Norwich,  to  which  town  their 
father  came  to  reside  at  the  termination  of  the  French  war.  In  the  year 
1818  George  Borrow  was  articled  to  an  eminent  solicitor  in  Norwich,  with 
whom  he  continued  five  yeai-s.  He  did  not  devote  himself  much  to  his  pro- 
fession, his  mind  being  engrossed  by  another  and  very  different  subject — 
namely  philology,  for  which  at  a  very  early  period  he  had  shown  a  decided 
inclination,  having  when  in  Ireland  with  his  father  acquired  the  Irish 
language.  At  the  expiration  of  his  clerkship  he  knew  little  of  the  law,  but 
was  well  versed  in  languages,  being  not  only  a  good  Greek  and  Latin  scholar, 
but  acquainted  witli  French,  Italian,  and  Spanish,  all  the  Celtic  and  Gothic 
dialects,  and  likewise  with  the  peculiar  language  of  the  English  Romany 
Chals  or  Gypsies.  This  speech  or  jargon,  amounting  to  about  eleven  hundred 
and  twenty-seven  words,  he  had  picked  up  amongst  the  wandering  tribes 
with  whom  he  had  formed  acquaintance  on  Mousehold,  a  wild  heath  near 
Norwich,  where  they  were  in  the  habit  of  encamping.  By  the  time  his  clerk- 
ship was  expired  his  father  was  dead,  and  he  had  little  to  depend  upon  but 
the  exercise  of  his  abilities  such  as  they  were.     In  1823  he  betook  himself 


CAPTAIN  BORROW  5 

I  am  thoroughly  sceptical,  is  endorsed  by  Dr.  Knapp/ 
who,  however,  could  find  no  trace  of  the  family  earlier 
than  1678,  the  old  parish  registers  having  been  de- 
stroyed. When  Thomas  Borrow  was  born  the  family 
were  in  any  case  nothing  more  than  small  farmers,  and 
Thomas  Borrow  and  his  brothers  were  working  on  the 
land  in  the  intervals  of  attending  the  parish  school.  At 
the  age  of  eighteen  Thomas  was  apprenticed  to  a  maltster 
at  Liskeard,  and  about  this  time  he  joined  the  local  Militia. 
Tradition  has  it  that  his  career  as  a  maltster  was  cut 
short  by  his  knocking  his  master  down  in  a  scrimmage. 
The  victor  fled  from  the  scene  of  his  prowess,  and 
enlisted  as  a  private  soldier  in  the  Coldstream  Guards. 
This  was  in  1783,  and  in  1792  he  was  transferred  to 
the  West  Norfolk  Militia ;  hence  his  appearance  at 
East  Dereham,  where,  now  a  serjeant,  his  occupations 
for  many  a  year  were  recruiting  and  drilling.^  It  is 
recorded  that  at  a  theatrical  performance  at  East 
Dereham  he  first  saw,  presumably  on  the  stage  of  the 
county-hall,  his  future  wife — Ann  Perfrement.  She 
was,  it  seems,  engaged  in  a  minor  part  in  a  travelling 
company,  not,  we  may  assume,  altogether  with  the 
sanction  of  her  father,  who,  in  spite  of  his  inheritance 
of  French  blood,  doubtless  shared  the  then  very  strong 
English   prejudice  against  the  stage.     However,  Ann 

to  London^  and  endeavoured  to  obtain  a  livelihood  by  literature.  For  some 
time  he  was  a  hack  author,  doing  common  work  for  booksellers.  For  one  in 
particular  he  prepared  an  edition  of  the  Newgate  Calendar,  from  the  carefu 
study  of  which  he  has  often  been  heard  to  say  that  he  first  learned  to  write 
genuine  English.  His  health  failed,  he  left  London,  and  for  a  considerable 
time  he  lived  a  life  of  roving  adventure. 

^  Knapp's  Life  of  Borrow,  vol.  i.  p.  (5. 

2  The  writer  recalls  at  his  own  school  at  Downham  Market  in  Norfolk  an 
old  Crimean  Veteran — Serjeant  Canham — drilling  the  boys  each  week,  thus 
supplementing  his  income  precisely  in  the  same  manner  as  did  Serjeant 
Borrow. 


6     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

was  one  of  eight  children,  and  had,  as  we  shall  find  in 
after  years,  no  inconsiderable  strength  of  character,  and 
so  may  well  at  twenty  years  of  age  have  decided  upon 
a  career  for  herself.  In  any  case  we  need  not  press 
too  hard  the  Cornish  and  French  origin  of  George 
Borrow  to  explain  his  wandering  tendencies,  nor  need 
we  wonder  at  the  suggestion  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne, 
that  he  was  '  supposed  to  be  of  gypsy  descent  by  the 
mother's  side.'  You  have  only  to  think  of  the  father, 
whose  work  carried  him  from  time  to  time  to  every 
corner  of  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland,  and  of  the 
mother  with  her  reminiscence  of  life  in  a  travelling 
theatrical  company,  to  explain  in  no  small  measure  the 
glorious  vagabondage  of  George  Borrow. 

Behold  then  Thomas  Borrow  and  Ann  Perfrement 
as  man  and  wife,  he  being  thirty-five  years  of  age,  she 
twenty-one.  A  roving,  restless  life  was  in  front  of  the 
pair  for  many  a  day,  the  West  Norfolk  JNlilitia  being 
stationed  in  some  eight  or  nine  separate  towns  within 
the  interv^al  of  ten  years  between  Thomas  Borrow's 
marriage  and  his  second  son's  birth.  The  first  child, 
John  Thomas  Borrow,  was  born  on  the  15th  April 
1801.^  The  second  son,  George  Henry  Borrow,  the 
subject  of  this  memoir,  was  born  in  his  grandfather's 
house  at  Dumpling  Green,  East  Dereham,  his  mother 
having  found  a  natural  refuge  with  her  father  while 
her  husband  was  busily  recruiting  in  Norfolk.  The 
two  children  passed  with  their  parents  from  place  to 
place,  and  in  1809  we  find  them  once  again  in   East 

'  The  date  has  always  hitherto  been  wrongly  given.  I  find  it  in  one  of 
Ann  Borrow's  note-books,  but  although  every  vicar  of  every  parish  in 
Chelmsford  and  Colchester  has  searched  the  registers  for  nie,  with  agreeable 
courtesy,  I  cannot  discover  a  record  of  John's  birthplace,  and  am  com- 
pelled to  the  belief  that  Dr.  Knapp  was  wrong  in  suggesting  one  or  other 
of  these  towns. 


CAPTAIN  BORROW  7 

Dereliam.  From  his  son's  two  books,  Lavengro  and 
Wild  IVales,  we  can  trace  the  father's  later  wanderings 
until  his  final  retirement  to  Norwich  on  a  pension.  In 
1810  the  family  were  at  Norman  Cross  in  Huntingdon- 
shire, when  Captain  Borrow  had  to  assist  in  guarding 
the  French  prisoners  of  war ;  for  it  was  the  stirring  epoch 
of  the  Napoleonic  conflict,  and  within  the  temporary 
prison  '  six  thousand  French  and  other  foreigners, 
followers  of  the  Grand  Corsican,  were  now  immured.' 

What  a  strange  appearance  had  those  mighty  casernes,  with 
their  blank  blind  walls,  without  windows  or  grating,  and  their 
slanting  roofs,  out  of  which,  through  orifices  where  the  tiles  had 
been  removed,  would  be  protruded  dozens  of  grim  heads,  feasting 
their  prison-sick  eyes  on  the  wide  expanse  of  country  unfolded 
from  that  airy  height.  Ah !  there  was  much  misery  in  those 
casernes  ;  and  from  those  roofs,  doubtless,  many  a  wistful  look 
was  turned  in  the  direction  of  lovely  France.  Much  had  the  poor 
inmates  to  endure,  and  much  to  complain  of,  to  the  disgrace  of 
England  be  it  said — of  England,  in  general  so  kind  and  bountiful. 
Rations  of  carrion  meat,  and  bread  from  which  I  have  seen  the 
very  hounds  occasionally  turn  away,  were  unworthy  entertainment 
even  for  the  most  ruffian  enemy,  when  helpless  and  a  captive  ;  and 
such,  alas  !  was  the  fare  in  those  casernes. 

But  here  we  have  only  to  do  with  Thomas  Borrow, 
of  whom  we  get  many  a  quaint  glimpse  in  Lavengro, 
our  first  and  our  last  being  concerned  with  him  in  the 
one  quality  that  his  son  seems  to  have  inherited,  as  the 
associate  of  a  prize-fighter — Big  Ben  Brain.  Borrow 
records  in  his  opening  chapter  that  Ben  Brain  and 
his  father  met  in  Hyde  Park  probably  in  1790, 
and  that  after  an  hour's  conflict  '  the  champions  shook 
hands  and  retired,  each  having  experienced  quite 
enough  of  the  other's  prowess.'  Borrow  further  relates 
that  four  months  afterwards  Brain  '  died  in  the  arms 
of  my  father,  who  read  to  him  the  Bible  in  his  last 


8     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

moments.'  Dr.  Knapp  finds  Borrow  in  one  of  his 
many  inaccuracies  or  rather  '  imaginings '  here,  as  Brain 
did  not  die  until  1794.  INIore  than  once  in  his  after 
years  the  old  soldier  seems  to  have  had  a  shy  pride 
in  that  early  conflict,  although  the  piety  which  seems 
to  have  come  to  him  with  the  responsibilities  of  wife 
and  children  led  him  to  count  any  recalling  of  the 
episode  as  a  'temptation.'  When  Borrow  was  about 
thirteen  years  of  age,  he  overheard  his  father  and  mother 
discussing  their  two  boys,  the  elder  being  the  father's 
favourite  and  George  the  mother's : 

'  I  will  hear  nothing  against  my  first-born,''  said  my  father, 
*  even  in  the  way  of  insinuation :  he  is  my  joy  and  pride ;  the 
very  image  of  myself  in  my  youthful  days,  long  before  I  fought 
Big  Ben,  though  perhaps  not  quite  so  tall  or  strong  built.  As 
for  the  other,  God  bless  the  child  !  I  love  him,  Fm  sure ;  but 
I  must  be  blind  not  to  see  the  difference  between  him  and  his 
brother.  Why,  he  has  neither  my  hair  nor  my  eyes ;  and  then 
his  countenance  !  why,  "'tis  absolutely  swarthy,  God  forgive  me ! 
I  had  almost  said  like  that  of  a  gypsy,  but  I  have  nothing  to 
say  against  that ;  the  boy  is  not  to  be  blamed  for  the  colour  of 
his  face,  nor  for  his  hair  and  eyes ;  but,  then,  his  ways  and 
manners ! — I  confess  I  do  not  like  them,  and  that  they  give  me 
no  little  uneasiness.'  ^ 

Borrow  throughout  his  narrative  refers  to  his  father 
as  *  a  man  of  excellent  common  sense,'  and  he  quotes 
the  opinion  of  William  Taylor,  who  had  rather  a  bad 
reputation  as  a  '  freethinker '  with  all  the  church -going 
citizens  of  Norwich,  with  no  little  pride.  Borrow  is 
of  course  the  *  young  man '  of  the  dialogue.  He  was 
then  eighteen  years  of  age  : 

'  Not  so,  not  so,'  said  the  young  man  eagerly ;  '  before  I  knew 
you  I  knew  nothing,  and  am  still  very  ignorant ;  but  of  late  my 

'  Lavengro,  ch.  xiv. 


CAPTAIN  BORROW  9 

father's  health  has  been  very  much  broken,  and  he  requires 
attention ;  his  spirits  also  have  become  low,  which,  to  tell  you 
the  truth,  he  attributes  to  my  misconduct.  He  says  that  I  have 
imbibed  all  kinds  of  strange  notions  and  doctrines,  which  will, 
in  all  probability,  prove  my  ruin,  both  here  and  hereafter ;  which 
— which ' 

'Ah!  I  understand,' said  the  elder,  with  another  calm  whiff. 
'  I  have  always  had  a  kind  of  respect  for  your  father,  for  there  is 
something  remarkable  in  his  appearance,  something  heroic,  and  I 
would  fain  have  cultivated  his  acquaintance;  the  feeling,  how- 
ever, has  not  been  reciprocated.  I  met  him  the  other  day,  up 
the  road,  with  his  cane  and  dog,  and  saluted  him  ;  he  did  not 
return  my  salutation.'' 

'  He  has  certain  opinions  of  his  own,'  said  the  youth, '  which  are 
widely  different  from  those  Avhich  he  has  heard  that  you  profess.' 

'  I  respect  a  man  for  entertaining  an  opinion  of  his  own,'  said 
the  elderly  individual.  '  I  hold  certain  opinions ;  but  I  should 
not  respect  an  individual  the  more  for  adopting  them.  All  1  wish 
for  is  tolerance,  which  I  myself  endeavour  to  practise.  I  have 
always  loved  the  truth,  and  sought  it ;  if  I  have  not  found  it,  the 
greater  my  misfortune.'  ^ 

When  Borrow  is  twenty  years  of  age  we  have  another 
ghmpse  of  father  and  son,  the  father  in  his  last  illness, 
the  son  eager  as  usual  to  draw  out  his  parent  upon 
the  one  subject  that  appeals  to  his  adventurous  spirit, 
'  I  should  like  to  know  something  about  Big  Ben,'  he 
says : 

'  You  are  a  strange  lad,'  said  my  fiither ;  '  and  though  of  late 
I  have  begun  to  entertain  a  more  favourable  opniion  than  hereto- 
fore, there  is  still  much  about  you  that  I  do  not  understand. 
Why  do  you  bring  up  that  name.?  Don't  you  know  that  it  is 
one  of  my  temptations?  You  wish  to  know  something  about 
him  ?  Well,  I  will  oblige  you  this  once,  and  then  farewell  to  such 
vanities — something  about  him.  I  will  tell  you — his — skin  when 
he  flung  ofl'his  clothes — and  he  had  a  particular  knack  in  doing 

^  Lavengro,  ch.  xxiii. 


10     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

so — his  skin,  when  he  bared  his  mighty  chest  and  back  for  combat ; 

and  when  he  fought  he  stood,  so if  I  remember  right — his 

skin,  I  say,  was  brown  and  dusky  as  that  of  a  toad.     Oh  me  !  I 
wish  my  elder  son  was  here  ! ' 

Concerning  the  career  of  Borrow's  father  there  seem  to 
be  no  documents  other  than  one  contained  in  LavengrOi 
yet  no  Life  of  Borrow  can  possibly  be  complete  that 
does  not  draw  boldly  upon  the  son's  priceless  tributes. 
And  so  we  come  now  to  the  last  scene  in  the  career  of 
the  elder  Borrow — his  death -bed — which  is  also  the 
last  page  of  the  first  volume  of  Lavengro.  George 
Borrow's  brother  has  arrived  from  abroad.  The  little 
house  in  Willow  Lane,  Norwich,  contained  the  mother 
and  her  two  sons  sorrowfully  awaiting  the  end,  which 
came  on  28th  February  1824. 

At  the  dead  hour  of  night — it  might  be  about  two — I  was 
awakened  from  sleep  by  a  cry  which  sounded  from  the  room 
immediately  below  that  in  which  I  slept.  I  knew  the  cry — it  was 
the  cry  of  my  mother ;  and  I  also  knew  its  import,  yet  I  made  no 
effort  to  rise,  for  I  was  for  the  moment  paralysed.  Again  the  cry 
sounded,  yet  still  I  lay  motionless — the  stupidity  of  horror  was 
upon  me.  A  third  time,  and  it  was  then  that,  by  a  violent  effort, 
bursting  the  spell  which  appeared  to  bind  me,  I  sprang  from  the 
bed  and  rushed  downstairs.  My  mother  was  running  wildly  about 
the  room ;  she  had  awoke  and  found  my  father  senseless  in  the 
bed  by  her  side.  I  essayed  to  raise  him,  and  after  a  few  efforts 
supported  him  in  the  bed  in  a  sitting  posture.  My  brother  now 
rushed  in,  and,  snatching  up  a  light  that  was  burning,  he  held  it 
to  my  father's  face.  '  The  surgeon  !  the  surgeon  ! '  he  cried  ;  then, 
dropping  the  light,  he  ran  out  of  the  room,  followed  by  my 
mother ;  I  remained  alone,  supporting  the  senseless  form  of  my 
father ;  the  light  had  been  extinguished  by  the  fall,  and  an  almost 
total  darkness  reigned  in  the  room.  The  form  pressed  heavily 
against  my  bosom ;  at  last  methought  it  moved.  Yes,  I  was 
right ;  there  was  a  heaving  of  the  breast,  and  then  a  gasping. 
Were  those  words  which  I  heard  ?     Yes,  they  were  words,  low  and 


CAPTAIN  BORROW  11 

indistinct  at  first,  and  then  audible.  The  mind  of  the  dying  man 
was  reverting  to  former  scenes.  I  heard  him  mention  names 
which  I  had  often  heard  him  mention  before.  It  was  an  awful 
moment ;  I  felt  stupefied,  but  I  still  contrived  to  support  my  dying 
father.  There  was  a  pause ;  again  my  father  spoke  :  I  heard  him 
speak  of  Minden,  and  of  Meredith,  the  old  Minden  serjeant,  and 
then  he  uttered  another  name,  which  at  one  period  of  his  life  was 

much  on  his  lips,  the  name  of ;  but  this  is  a  solemn  moment ! 

There  was  a  deep  gasp :  I  shook,  and  thought  all  was  over ;  but  I 
was  mistaken — my  father  moved,  and  revived  for  a  moment ;  he 
supported  himself  in  bed  without  my  assistance.  I  make  no  doubt 
that  for  a  moment  he  was  perfectly  sensible,  and  it  was  then  that, 
clasping  his  hands,  he  uttered  another  name  clearly,  distinctly — it 
was  the  name  of  Christ.  With  that  name  upon  his  lips  the  brave 
old  soldier  sank  back  upon  my  bosom,  and,  with  his  hands  still 
clasped,  yielded  up  his  soul. 

Did  Borrow's  father  ever  really  fight  Big  Ben  Brain  or 
Bryan  in  Hyde  Park,  or  is  it  all  a  fantasy  of  the 
artist's  imagining  ?  We  shall  never  know.  Borrow 
called  his  Lavengro  '  An  Autobiography '  at  one  stage 
of  its  inception,  although  he  wished  to  repudiate  the 
autobiographical  nature  of  his  story  at  another.  Dr. 
Knapp  in  his  anxiety  to  prove  that  Borrow  wrote  his 
own  memoirs  in  Lavengro  and  Romany  Rye  tells  us 
that  he  had  no  creative  faculty — an  absurd  proposition. 
But  I  think  we  may  accept  the  contest  between  Ben 
Brain  and  Thomas  Borrow,  and  what  a  revelation  of 
heredity  that  impressive  death-bed  scene  may  be 
counted.  Borrow  on  one  occasion  in  later  life  declared 
that  his  favourite  books  were  the  Bible  and  the  Newgate 
Calendar.  We  know  that  he  specialised  on  the  Bible 
and  Prize-Fighting  in  no  ordinary  fashion — and  here 
we  see  his  father  on  his  death-bed  struggling  between 
the  religious  sentiments  of  his  maturity  and  the  one 
great  worldly  escapade  of  his  early  manhood. 


CHAPTER    II 

BORROWS  MOTHER 

Throughout  his  whole  life  George  Borrow  adored  his 
mother,  who  seems  to  have  developed  into  a  woman  of 
great  strength  of  character  far  remote  from  the  pretty 
play-actor  who  won  the  heart  of  a  young  soldier  at 
East  Dereham  in  the  last  years  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  We  would  gladly  know  something  of  the 
early  years  of  Ann  Perfrement.  Her  father  was  a 
farmer,  whose  farm  at  Dumpling  Green  we  have  already 
described.  He  did  not,  however,  '  farm  his  own  little 
estate '  as  Borrow  declared.  The  grandfather — a  French 
Protestant — came,  if  we  are  to  believe  Borrow,  from 
Caen  in  Normandy  after  the  Revocation  of  the  Edict 
of  Nantes,  but  there  is  no  documentary  evidence  to 
support  the  contention.  However,  the  story  of  the 
Huguenot  immigration  into  England  is  clearly  bound 
up  with  Norwich  and  the  adjacent  district.  And  so 
we  may  well  take  the  name  of  *  Perfrement '  as  con- 
clusive evidence  of  a  French  origin,  and  reject  as  utterly 
untenable  the  not  unnatural  suggestion  of  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne,  that  Borrow's  mother  was  '  of  gypsy 
descent.'  ^     She  was  one  of  the  eight  children  of  Samuel 

'  24th  May  1856.  Dining  at  Mr.  Rathboue's  one  evening  last  week  (21st 
May),  it  was  mentioned  that  Borrow^  author  of  The  Bible  in  Spain,  is  supposed 
to  be  of  gypsy  descent  by  the  mother's  side.  Hereupon  Mr.  Martineau 
mentioned  that  he  had  been  a  school-fellow  of  Borrow,  and  though  he  had 

12 


BORROWS  MOTHER  18 

and  Mary  Perfrement,  all  of  whom  seem  to  have  devoted 
their  lives  to  East  Anglia/     We  owe  to  Dr.  Knapp's 
edition  of  Lavengro  one  exquisite  glimpse  of  Ann's 
girlhood  that  is  not  in  any  other  issue  of  the  book. 
Ann's  elder  sister,  curious  to  know  if  she  was  ever  to 
be  married,  falls  in  with  the  current  superstition  that 
she  must  wash  her  linen  and  '  watch '  it  drying  before 
the  fire  between  eleven  and  twelve  at   night.     Ann 
Perfrement  was  ten  years  old  at  the  time.     The  two 
girls   walked   over   to   East  Dereham,   purchased   the 
necessary   garment,   washed   it  in  the  pool   near   the 
house    that    may    still    be    seen,    and   watched    and 
watched.     Suddenly  when  the  clock  struck  twelve  they 
heard,  or  thought  they  heard,  a  footstep  on  the  path,  the 
wind  howled,  and  the  elder  sister  sprang  to  the  door, 
locked  and  bolted  it,  and  then  fell  in  convulsions  on  the 
floor.     The  superstition,  which  Borrow  seems  to  have 
told  his  mother  had  a  Danish  origin,  is  common  enough 
in  Ireland  and  in  Celtic  lands.     It  could  scarcely  have 
been  thus  rehearsed  by  two  Norfolk  children  had  they 
not  had  the  blood  of  a  more  imaginative  race  in  their 
veins.     In  addition   to   this  we   find   more   than    one 
effective   glimpse   of   Borrow's   mother   in   Lavengro. 
We  have  already  noted  the  episode  in  which  she  takes 
the  side  of  her  younger  boy  against  her  husband,  with 
whom  John  was  the  favourite.     We  meet  her  again  in 
the  following  dialogue,  with  its  pathetic  allusions  to 
Dante  and  to  the  complaint — a  kind  of  nervous  exhaus- 

never  heard  of  his  gypsy  blood,  he  thought  it  probable,  from  Borrow's  traits 
of  character.  He  said  that  Borrow  had  once  run  away  from  school,  and 
carried  with  him  a  party  of  other  boys,  meaning  to  lead  a  wandering  life 
{The  English  Note-books  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  vol.  ii.  1858). 

*  Samuel  and  Maria  Perfrement  were  married  in  1760^  the  latter  to 
John  Burcham.  Two  of  her  brothers  survived  Ann  Borrow,  Samuel  Perfre- 
ment dying  in  18G4  and  Philip  in  1867. 


14     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

tion  which  he  called  '  the  horrors ' — that  was  to  trouble 
Borrow  all  his  days  : 

'  What  ails  you,  my  child  ? '  said  a  mother  to  her  son,  as  he  lay 
on  a  couch  under  the  influence  of  the  dreadful  one ;  '  what  ails 
you  ?  you  seem  afraid  !  "* 

Boy.  And  so  I  am  ;  a  dreadful  fear  is  upon  me. 

Mother.  But  of  what  ?  there  is  no  one  can  harm  you  ;  of  what 
are  you  apprehensive  ? 

Boy.  Of  nothing  that  I  can  express.  I  know  not  what  I  am 
afraid  of,  but  afraid  I  am. 

Mother.  Perhaps  you  see  sights  and  visions.  I  knew  a  lady 
once  who  was  continually  thinking  that  she  saw  an  armed  man 
threaten  her,  but  it  was  only  an  imagination,  a  phantom  of  the 
brain. 

Boy.  No  armed  man  threatens  me ;  and  'tis  not  a  thing  like 
that  would  cause  me  any  fear.  Did  an  armed  man  threaten  me  I 
would  get  up  and  fight  him  ;  weak  as  I  am,  I  would  wish  for 
nothing  better,  for  then,  perhaps,  I  should  lose  this  fear ;  mine  is 
a  dread  of  I  know  not  what,  and  there  the  horror  lies. 

Mother.  Your  forehead  is  cool,  and  your  speech  collected.  Do 
you  know  where  you  are  ? 

Boy.  I  know  where  I  am,  and  I  see  things  just  as  they  are ; 
you  are  beside  me,  and  upon  the  table  there  is  a  book  which  was 
written  by  a  Florentine ;  all  this  I  see,  and  that  there  is  no  ground 
for  being  afraid.  I  am,  moreover,  quite  cool,  and  feel  no  pain — 
but,  but 

And  then  there  was  a  burst  of  '  gemiti,  sospiri  ed  alti  guai.' 
Alas,  alas,  poor  child  of  clay  !  as  the  sparks  fly  upward,  so  wast 
thou  born  to  sorrow — Onward  !  ^ 

Our  next  glimpse  of  INIrs.  Borrow  is  when  after  his 
father's  death  George  had  shouldered  his  knapsack  and 
made  his  way  to  London  to  seek  his  fortune  by  litera- 
ture. His  elder  brother  had  remained  at  home, 
determined  upon  being  a  painter,  but  joined  George  in 

'  Lavengro,  ch.  xviii. 


BORKOW'S  MOTHER  15 

London,  leaving    the  widowed    mother   momentarily 
alone  in  Norwich. 

'  And  how  are  things  going  on  at  home  ? '  said  I  to  my  hrother, 
after  we  had  kissed  and  embraced.  '  How  is  my  mother,  and  how 
is  the  dog  ? ' 

'  My  mother,  thank  God,  is  tolerably  well,'  said  my  brother, 
'  but  very  much  given  to  fits  of  crying.  As  for  the  dog,  he  is  not 
so  well ;  but  we  will  talk  more  of  these  matters  anon,'  said  my 
brother,  again  glancing  at  the  breakfast  things.  '  I  am  very 
hungry,  as  you  may  suppose,  after  having  travelled  all  night.' 

Thereupon  I  exerted  myself  to  the  best  of  my  ability  to  perform 
the  duties  of  hospitality,  and  I  made  my  brother  welcome — I  may 
say  more  than  welcome  ;  and  when  the  rage  of  my  brother's  hunger 
was  somewhat  abated,  we  recommenced  talking  about  the  matters  of 
our  little  family,  and  my  brother  told  me  much  about  my  mother ; 
he  spoke  of  her  fits  of  crying,  but  said  that  of  late  the  said  fits 
of  crying  had  much  diminished,  and  she  appeared  to  be  taking 
comfort ;  and,  if  I  am  not  much  mistaken,  my  brother  told  me 
that  my  mother  had  of  late  the  prayer-book  frequently  in  her 
hand,  and  yet  oftener  the  Bible.^ 

Ann  Borrow  lived  in  Willow  Lane,  Norwich,  for 
thirty-three  years.  That  Borrow  was  a  devoted 
husband  these  pages  will  show.  He  was  also  a  de- 
voted son.  When  he  had  made  a  prosperous  marriage 
he  tried  hard  to  persuade  his  mother  to  live  with  him 
at  Oulton,  but  all  in  vain.  She  had  the  wisdom  to 
see  that  such  an  arrangement  is  rarely  conducive  to 
a  son's  domestic  happiness.  She  continued  to  live  in 
the  little  cottage  made  sacred  by  many  associations 
until  almost  the  end  of  her  days.  Here  she  had  lived 
in  earlier  years  with  her  husband  and  her  two  ambitious 
boys,  and  in  Norwich,  doubtless,  she  had  made  her 
own  friendships,  although  of  these  no  record  remains. 
The  cottage  still  stands  in  its   modest  court,  but  is 

^  Lavengro,  cli.  xxxvii. 


16     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

at  the  moment  untenanted.  There  is  a  letter  extant 
from  Ceciha  Lucy  Brightwell,  who  wrote  The  Life 
of  Mrs.  Opie,  to  Mary  Borrow  at  Oulton,  when 
Mrs.  Borrow  the  elder  had  gone  to  live  there,  which 
records  the  fact  that  in  1851,  two  years  after  Mrs. 
Borrow  had  left  the  cottage  in  Willow  Lane,  it  had 
already  changed  its  appearance.  Mrs.  Brightwell 
writes  : 

Give  my  kind  love  to  dear  mother.  Tell  her  I  went  past  her 
house  to-day  and  looked  up  the  court.  It  is  quite  changed  :  all 
the  trees  and  the  ivy  taken  away. 

The  house  was  the  property  of  Thomas  King,  a 
carpenter.  You  enter  from  Willow  Lane  through  a 
covered  passage  into  what  was  then  known  as  King's 
Court.  Here  the  little  house  faces  you,  and  you 
meet  it  with  a  peculiarly  agreeable  sensation,  recalling 
more  than  one  incident  in  Lavengro  that  transpired 
there.  In  1897  the  then  mayor  made  the  one  attempt 
of  his  city  of  a  whole  half  century  to  honour  Borrow 
by  calling  this  court  Borrow's  Court — thereby  con- 
ferring a  ridiculously  small  distinction  upon  Borrow,^ 
and  removing  a  landmark  connected  with  one  of  its 
own  worthy  citizens.  For  Thomas  King,  the  carpenter, 
was  in  direct  descent  in  the  maternal  line  from  the 
family  of  Parker,  which  gave  to  Norwich  one  of  its 
most  distinguished  sons  in  the  famous  Archbishop  of 
Queen  Elizabeth's  day.  He  extended  his  business  as 
carpenter  sufficiently  to  die  a  prosperous  builder.  Of 
his  two  sons  one,  also  named  Thomas,  became  physician 
to  Prince   Talleyrand,  and   married  a  sister  of  John 

1  111  May  1913  the  Lord  Mayor  of  Norwich  (Mr.  A.  M.  Samuel)  purchased 
the  Borrow  house  in  Willow  Lane  for  £'o75,  aud  gave  it  to  the  city  for  the 
purpose  of  a  Borrow  Museum. 


THE  BORROW  HOUSE,  NORWICH 

The  house  is  situated  in  Borrow's  Court,  formerly  King's  Court,  Willow  Lane, 

St.   Giles's,   Norwich,  and  here   Borrow  lived  at  intervals  from   1816  to   his 

marriage  in  1839.      His  mother  lived  liere  for  thirtv-three  years  until  1849  ;  his 

father  died  here,  and  is  buried  in  the  neighbouring  churchyard  of  St.  Giles's. 


16 


BORROWS  MOTHER  17 

Stuart  Mill.^  All  this  by  the  way,  but  there  is  little 
more  to  record  of  Borrow's  mother  apart  from  tlie 
letters  addressed  to  her  by  her  son,  which  occur  in 
their  due  place  in  these  records.  Yet  one  little 
memorandum  among  my  papers  which  bears  INlrs. 
Borrow's  signature  may  well  find  place  here  : 

In  the  year  1797  I  was  at  Canterbury.  One  night  at  about 
one  o"'clock  Sir  Robert  Laurie  and  Captain  Treve  came  to  our 
lodgings  and  tapped  at  our  bedroom  door,  and  told  my  husband 
to  get  up,  and  get  the  men  under  arms  without  beat  of  drum  as 
soon  as  possible,  for  that  there  was  a  mutiny  at  the  Nore.  My 
husband  did  so,  and  in  less  than  two  hours  they  had  marched  out 
of  town  towards  Sheerness  without  making  any  noise.  They  had 
to  break  open  the  store-house  in  order  to  get  provender,  because  the 
Quartermaster,  Serjeant  Rowe,  was  out  of  the  way.  The  Dragoon 
Guards  at  that  time  at  Canterbury  were  in  a  state  of  mutiny. 

Ann  Borrow. 

*  This  Thomas  King  was  a  cousin  of  my  mother ;  his  father  built  the 
Borrow  House  in  Norwich  in  1812.  The  only  allusion  to  him  I  have  ever 
seen  in  print  is  contained  in  a  letter  on  Lavengro  contributed  by  Thomas 
Burcham  to  The  Britannia  newspaper  of  June  26^  1851: — '\Vith  your 
criticism  on  Lavengro  I  cordially  agree,  and  if  you  were  disappointed  in  the 
long  promised  work,  what  must  I  have  been  ?  A  schoolfellow  of  Borrow, 
who,  in  the  autobiography,  expected  to  find  much  interesting  matter,  not 
only  relating  to  himself,  but  also  to  schoolfellows  and  friends — the 
associates  of  his  youth,  who,  in  after-life,  gained  no  slight  notoriety — amongst 
them  may  be  named  Sir  James  Brooke,  Rajah  of  Sarawak  ;  poor  Stoddard, 
who  was  murdered  at  Bokhara,  and  who,  as  a  boy,  displayed  that  noble 
bearing  and  high  sensitiveness  of  honour  which  partly  induced  that  fatal  result ; 
and  Thomas  King,  one  of  Borrow's  early  friends,  who,  the  son  of  a  carpenter 
at  Norwich,  the  landlord  of  Lavengro's  father,  after  working  in  his  father's 
shop  till  nearly  sixteen,  went  to  Paris,  entered  himself  as  a  student  at  one  of 
the  hospitals,  and  through  his  energy  and  intellect  became  internal  surgeon 
of  L'Hotel  Dieu  and  private  physician  to  Prince  Talleyrand.'  Thomas 
Borrow  Burcham  was  Magistrate  of  Southwark  Police  Court  from  1856  till 
his  death  in  1869.     He  was  the  son  of  Maria  Perfrement,  Borrow's  aunt. 


CHAPTER    III 

JOHN    THOMAS    BORROW 

John  Thomas  Borrow  was  born  two  years  before  his 
younger  brother,  that  is,  on  the  15th  April  1801. 
His  father,  then  Serjeant  Borrow,  was  wandering  from 
town  to  town,  and  it  is  not  known  where  his  elder  son 
first  saw  the  light.  John  Borrow 's  nature  was  cast  in 
a  somewhat  different  mould  from  that  of  his  brother. 
He  was  his  father's  pride.  Serjeant  Borrow  could  not 
understand  George  with  his  extraordinary  taste  for  the 
society  of  queer  people — the  wild  Irish  and  the  ragged 
Romanies.  John  had  far  more  of  the  normal  in  his 
being.  Borrow  gives  us  in  Lavengro  our  earliest 
glimpse  of  his  brother : 

He  was  a  beautiful  child ;  one  of  those  occasionally  seen  in 
England,  and  in  England  alone ;  a  rosy,  angelic  face,  blue  eyes, 
and  light  chestnut  hair ;  it  was  not  exactly  an  Artglo-Saxon 
countenance,  in  which,  by  the  by,  there  is  generally  a  cast  of 
loutishness  and  stupidity ;  it  partook,  to  a  certain  extent,  of  the 
Celtic  character,  particularly  in  the  fire  and  vivacity  which 
illumined  it ;  his  face  was  the  mirror  of  his  mind ;  perhaps  no 
disposition  more  amiable  was  ever  found  amongst  the  children  of 
Adam,  united,  however,  with  no  inconsiderable  portion  of  high 
and  dauntless  spirit.  So  great  was  his  beauty  in  infancy,  that 
people,  especially  those  of  the  j)oorer  classes,  would  follow  the 
nurse  who  carried  him  about  in  order  to  look  at  and  bless  his 
lovely  face.  At  the  age  of  three  months  an  attempt  was  made  to 
snatch  him  from  his  mother's  arms  in  the  streets  of  London,  at 

IS 


JOHN  THOMAS  BORROW  19 

the  moment  she  was  about  to  enter  a  coach  ;  indeed,  his  appear- 
ance seemed  to  operate  so  powerfully  upon  every  person  who 
beheld  him,  that  my  parents  were  under  continual  apprehension 
of  losing  him ;  his  beauty,  however,  was  perhaps  surpassed  by  the 
quickness  of  his  parts.  He  mastered  his  letters  in  a  few  hours, 
and  in  a  day  or  two  could  decipher  the  names  of  people  on  the 
doors  of  houses  and  over  the  shop-windows. 

John  received  his  early  education  at  the  Norwich 
Grammar  School,  while  the  younger  brother  was  kept 
under  the  paternal  wing.  Father  and  mother,  with 
their  younger  boy  George,  were  always  on  the  move, 
passing  from  county  to  county  and  from  country  to 
country,  as  Serjeant  Borrow,  soon  to  be  Captain, 
attended  to  his  duties  of  drilling  and  recruiting,  now 
in  England,  now  in  Scotland,  now  in  Ireland.  We 
are  given  a  fascinating  glimpse  of  John  Borrow  in 
Lavcngro  by  way  of  a  conversation  between  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Borrow  over  the  education  of  their  children.  It 
was  agreed  that  while  the  family  were  in  Edinburgh 
the  boys  should  be  sent  to  the  High  School,  and  so  at 
the  historic  school  that  Sir  Walter  Scott  had  attended 
a  generation  before  the  two  boys  were  placed,  John 
being  removed  from  the  Norwich  Grammar  School 
for  the  purpose.  Among  his  many  prejudices  of  after 
years  Borrow's  dislike  of  Scott  was  perhaps  the  most 
regrettable,  otherwise  he  would  have  gloried  in  the 
fact  that  their  childhood  had  had  one  remarkable 
point  in  common.  Each  boy  took  part  in  the  feuds 
between  the  Old  Town  and  the  New  Town.  Exactly 
as  Scott  records  his  prowess  at  'the  manning  of  the 
Cowgate  Port,'  and  the  combats  maintained  with 
great  vigour,  '  with  stones,  and  sticks,  and  fisticuffs,'  as 
set  forth  in  the  first  volume  of  Lockhart,  so  we  have 
not   dissimilar   feats    set    down   in   Lavengro.      Side 


20     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

by  side  also  with  the  story  of  *  Green- Breeks,'  which 
stands  out  in  Scott's  narrative  of  his  school  combats, 
we  have  the  more  lurid  account  by  Borrow  of  David 
Haggart.  Literary  biography  is  made  more  interesting 
by  such  episodes  of  likeness  and  of  contrast. 

We  next  find  John  Borrow  in  Ireland  with  his 
father,  mother,  and  brother.  George  is  still  a  child, 
but  he  is  precocious  enough  to  be  learning  the  language, 
and  thus  laying  the  foundation  of  his  interest  in  little- 
known  tongues.  John  is  now  an  ensign  in  his  father's 
regiment.  *  Ah !  he  was  a  sweet  being,  that  boy 
soldier,  a  plant  of  early  promise,  bidding  fair  to  become 
in  after  time  all  that  is  great,  good,  and  admirable  ' 
Ensign  John  tells  his  little  brother  how  pleased  he  is 
to  find  himself,  although  not  yet  sixteen  years  old,  '  a 
person  in  authority  with  many  Englishmen  under  me. 
Oh !  these  last  six  weeks  have  passed  like  hours  in 
heaven.'  That  was  in  1816,  and  we  do  not  meet  John 
again  until  five  years  later,  when  we  hear  of  him 
rushing  into  the  water  to  save  a  drowning  man,  while 
twenty  others  were  bathing  who  might  have  rendered 
assistance.  Borrow  records  once  again  his  father's 
satisfaction : 

'  My  boy,  my  own  boy,  you  are  the  very  image  of  myself,  the 
day  I  took  off  my  coat  in  the  park  to  fight  Big  Ben,'  said  my 
father,  on  meeting  his  son,  wet  and  dripping,  immediately  after 
his  bold  feat.  And  who  cannot  excuse  the  honest  pride  of  the  old 
man — the  stout  old  man  ? 

In  the  interval  the  war  had  ended,  and  Napoleon 
had  departed  for  St.  Helena.  Peace  had  led  to  the 
pensioning  of  militia  officers,  or  reducing  to  half-pay  of 
the  juniors.  The  elder  Borrow  had  settled  in  Norwich. 
George  was  set  to  study  at  the  Grammar  School  there, 


JOHN  THOMAS  BORROW  21 

while  his  brother  worked  in  Old   Crome's  studio,  for 
here  was  a  moment  when  Norwich  had  its  interesting 
Renaissance,  and  John  Borrow  was  bent  on  being  an 
artist.     He   had   worked   with    Crome   once   before — 
during  the  brief  interval  that  Napoleon  was  at  Elba — 
but  now  he  set  to  in  real  earnest,  and  we  have  evidence 
of  a  score  of  pictures  by  him  that  were  catalogued  in 
the  exhibitions  of  the  Norwich  Society  of  Artists  be- 
tween the  years   1817  and  1824.     They  include  one 
portrait  of  the  artist's  father,  and  two  of  his  brother 
George.^     Old    Crome   died  in   1821,   and  then  John 
went   to    London   to    study   under  Haydon.     Borrow 
declares  that  his  brother  had  real  taste  for  painting, 
and  that  '  if  circumstances  had  not  eventually  diverted 
his   mind   from   the   pursuit,  he  would  have  attained 
excellence,  and  left  behind  him  some  enduring  monu- 
ment of  his  powers.'     '  He   lacked,  however,'  he  tells 
us,  *one  thing,  the  want  of  which  is   but  too   often 
fatal  to  the  sons  of  genius,  and  without  which  genius 
is  little  more  than  a  splendid  toy  in  the  hands  of  the 
possessor — perseverance,  dogged  perseverance.'     It  is 
when  he  is  thus  commenting  on  his  brother's  character- 
istics that  Borrow  gives  his  own  fine  if  narrow  eulogy 
of  Old  Crome.     John  Borrow  seems  to  have  continued 
his  studies  in  London  under  Haydon  for  a  year,  and 
then  to  have   gone  to  Paris  to  copy  pictures   at   the 

^  I  am  not  able  to  trace  more  than  tliree  of  John  Borrow's  pictures  : 
firstly,  a  portrait  of  George  Borrow,  reproduced  in  this  book,  which  was  long 
in  the  possession  of  Mr.  William  Jarrold,  the  well-known  publisher  of  Norwich, 
and  is  now  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery  in  London,  having  been  purchased 
by  the  Director  in  1912 ;  secondly,  the  portrait  of  Borrow's  father  in  the 
possession  of  a  lady  at  Leamington  ;  and  thirdly,  The  Judgment  of  Solomon, 
which  for  a  long  time  hung  as  an  overmantel  in  the  Borrow  House  in  Willow 
Lane,  Norwich.  Dr.  Knapp  also  saw  in  Norwich  ^A  Portrait  of  a  Gentle- 
man,' by  John  Borrow.  A  second  portrait  of  George  Borrow  by  his  brother 
was  taken  by  the  latter  to  Mexico,  and  has  not  since  been  heard  of. 


22     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Louvre.     He  mentions  a  particular  copy  that  he  made 
of  a  celebrated  picture  by  one  of  the  Italian  masters, 
for  which  a  Hungarian  nobleman  paid  him  well.     His 
three  years'  absence  was  brought  to  an  abrupt  termina- 
tion by  news  of  his  father's  illness.     He  returned  to 
Norwich   in    time   to   stand   by  that  father's  bedside 
when    he   died.     The   elder  Borrow  died,  as  we  have 
seen,  in  February  1824.     The   little   home   in  King's 
Court  was  kept  on  for  the  mother,  and  as  John  was 
making  money  by  his  pictures  it  was  understood  that 
he  should  stay  with  her.     On  the  1st  April,  however, 
George  started  for  London,  carrying  the   manuscript 
of  Romantic  Ballads  from  the  Danish  to  Sir  Richard 
Phillips,  the  publisher.     On  the  29th  of  the  same  month 
he  was  joined  by  his  brother  John.     John  had  come  to 
London  at  his  own  expense,  but  in  the  interests  of  the 
Norwich  Town  Council.    The  council  wanted  a  portrait 
of  one  of  its  mayors  for  St.  Andrew's  Hall — that  Val- 
halla of  Norwich  municipal  worthies  which  still  strikes 
the  stranger  as  well-nigh   unique  in  the  city  life   of 
England.      The    municipality    wo^ild    fain    have    en- 
couraged a  fellow-citizen,  and  John  Borrow  had  been 
invited  to  paint  the  portrait.     'Why,'  it  was  asked, 
*  should  the  money  go  into  a  stranger's  pocket  and  be 
spent  in  London  ? '    John,  however,  felt  diffident  of  his 
ability  and  declined,  and  this  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
the  £100  offered  for  the  portrait  must  have  been  very 
tempting.     '  What  a  pity  it  was,'  he  said,  '  that  Crome 
was  dead.'     '  Crome,'  said  the  orator  of  the  deputation 
that  had  called  on  John  Borrow, 

'  Crome ;  yes,  he  was  a  clever  man,  a  very  clever  man,  in  his 
way ;  he  was  good  at  painting  landscapes  and  farm-houses,  but  he 
would  not  do  in  the  present  instance,  were  he  alive.  He  had  no 
conception  of  the  heroic,  sir.     We  want  some  person  capable  of 


JOHN  THOMAS  BORROW  23 

representing  our  mayor  standing  under  the  Norman  arch  of  the 
cathedral."'  ^ 

At  the  mention  of  the  heroic  John  bethought  himself 
of  Haydon,  and  suggested  his  name ;  hence  his  visit  to 
London,  and  his  proposed  interview  with  Haydon.  The 
two  brothers  went  together  to  call  upon  the  '  painter  of 
the  heroic '  at  his  studio  in  Connaught  Terrace,  Hyde 
Park.  There  was  some  difficulty  about  their  admission, 
and  it  turned  out  afterwards  that  Haydon  thought  they 
might  be  duns,  as  he  was  very  hard  up  at  the  time. 
His  eyes  glistened  at  the  mention  of  the  £100.  *  I  am 
not  very  fond  of  painting  portraits,'  he  said,  '  but  a 
mayor  is  a  mayor,  and  tliere  is  something  grand  in  that 
idea  of  the  Norman  arch.'  And  thus  INIayor  Hawkes 
came  to  be  painted  by  Benjamin  Haydon,  and  his 
portrait  may  be  found,  not  without  diligent  search, 
among  the  many  municipal  worthies  that  figure  on  the 
walls  of  that  most  picturesque  old  Hall  in  Norwich. 
Here  is  Borrow's  description  of  the  painting: 

The  original  mayor  was  a  mighty,  portly  man,  with  a  bull's 
head,  black  hair,  body  like  that  of  a  dray  horse,  and  legs  and 
thighs  corresponding ;  a  man  six  foot  high  at  the  least.  To  his 
bull's  head,  black  hair,  and  body  the  painter  had  done  justice; 
there  was  one  point,  however,  in  which  the  portrait  did  not  corre- 
spond with  the  original — the  legs  were  disproportionably  short, 
the  painter  having  substituted  his  own  legs  for  those  of  the 
mayor. 

John  Borrow  described  Robert  Hawkes  to  his  brother 
as  a  person  of  many  qualifications  : 

— big  and  portly,  with  a  voice  like  Boanerges;  a  religious  man, 
the  possessor  of  an  immense  pew ;  loyal,  so  much  so  that  I  once 
heard  him  say  that  he  would  at  any  time  go  three  miles  to  hear 
any  one  sing  '  God  save  the  King ' ;  moreover,  a  giver  of  excellent 

^  LaveiKjro,  cli.  xxv. 


24     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

dinners.  Such  is  our  present  mayor,  wlio,  owing  to  his  loyalty, 
his  religion,  and  a  little,  perhaps,  to  his  dinners,  is  a  mighty 
favourite. 

Haydon,  who  makes  no  mention  of  the  Borrows  in  his 
Correspondence  or  Autobiography,  although  there  is  one 
letter  of  George  Borrow's  to  him  in  the  latter  work, 
had  been  in  jail  for  debt  three  years  prior  to  the  visit 
of  the  Borrows.  He  was  then  at  work  on  his  greatest 
success  in  'the  heroic' — The  Raising  of  Lazai^us,  a 
canvas  nineteen  feet  long  by  fifteen  high.  The 
debt  was  one  to  house  decorators,  for  the  artist  had 
ever  large  ideas.  The  bailiff,  he  tells  us,^  was  so 
agitated  at  the  sight  of  the  painting  of  Lazarus  in  the 
studio  that  he  cried  out,  '  Oh,  my  God !  Sir,  I  won't 
arrest  you.  Give  me  your  word  to  meet  me  at  twelve 
at  the  attorney's,  and  I'll  take  it.'  In  1821  Haydon 
married,  and  a  little  later  we  find  him  again  '  without  a 
single  shilling  in  the  world — with  a  large  picture  before 
me  not  half  done.'  In  April  1822  he  is  arrested  at 
the  instance  of  his  colourman,  '  with  whom  I  had  dealt 
for  fifteen  years,'  and  in  November  of  the  same  year  he 
is  arrested  again  at  the  instance  of '  a  miserable  apothe- 
cary.' In  April  1823  we  find  him  in  the  King's  Bench 
Prison,  from  which  he  was  released  in  July.  The 
Raising  of  Lazarus  meanwhile  had  gone  to  pay  his 
upholsterer  £300,  and  his  Chiisfs  Entry  into  Jerusa- 
lem had  been  sold  for  £240,  although  it  had  brought 
him  £3000  in  receipts  at  exhibitions.  Clearly  heroic 
pictures  did  not  pay,  and  Haydon  here  took  up  '  the 
torment  of  portrait-painting '  as  he  called  it. 

'  Can  you  wonder,'  he  wrote  in  July  1825,  'that  I  nauseate 
portraits,  except  portraits  of  clever  people.     1  feel  quite  convinced 

1  Life  ofB.  li.  Haydon,  by  Tom  Taylor,  1853,  vol.  ii.  p.  21. 


ROBERT  HAWKES,  xMAYOR  OF  NORWICH  ix  1S24 

From  the  painting  by  Benjamin  Haydon  in  St.  Andrew's  Hall,  Norwich. 
This  portrait  has  its  association  with  Horrow  in  that  his  brother  John  was  sent 
to  London  to  request  Haydon  to  paint  it,  and  Borrow  describes  the  jjicture 

in  Laveiisi'o. 


24 


JOHN  THOMAS  BORROW  25 

that  every  portrait-painter,  if  there  be  purgatory,  will  leap  at 
once  to  heaven,  without  this  previous  purification/ 

Perhaps  it  was  Mayor  Hawkes  who  helped  to  inspire 
this  feeling.^  Yet  the  hundred  pounds  that  John 
Borrow  was  able  to  procure  must  have  been  a  godsend, 
for  shortly  before  this  we  find  him  writing  in  his  diary 
of  the  desperation  that  caused  him  to  sell  his  books. 
'  Books  that  had  cost  me  £20  I  got  only  £3  for.  But 
it  was  better  than  starvation.'  Indeed  it  was  in  April 
of  this  year  that  the  very  baker  was  *  insolent,'  and  so 
in  May  1824,  as  we  learn  from  Tom  Taylor's  Life,  he 
produced  '  a  full-length  portrait  of  Mr.  Hawkes,  a  late 
Mayor  of  Norwich,  painted  for  St.  Andrew's  Hall  in 
that  city.'  But  I  must  leave  Haydon's  troubled  career, 
which  closes  so  far  as  the  two  brothers  are  concerned 
with  a  letter  from  George  to  Haydon  written  the 
following  year  from  26  Bryanston  Street,  Portman 
Square  : 

Dear  Sir, — I  should  feel  extremely  obliged  if  you  would 
allow  me  to  sit  to  you  as  soon  as  possible.  I  am  going  to  the 
south  of  France  in  little  better  than  a  fortnight,  and  I  would 
sooner  lose  a  thousand  pounds  than  not  have  the  honour  of 
appearing  in  the  picture. — Yours  sincerely, 

George  Borrow.^ 

'  Or  perhaps  the  experience  contained  in  a  letter  to  Miss  Mitford  in  1824 
{Benjainin  Robert  Haydon:  Correspondence  and  Table  Talk,  2  vols.,  1876)  : 

'  I  have  had  a  horrid  week  with  a  mother  and  eight  daughters  !  Mamma 
remembering  herself  a  beauty ;  Sally  and  Betsey,  etc.,  see  her  a  matron.  They 
say,  "  Oh  !  this  is  more  suitable  to  mamma's  age,"  and  "that  fits  mamma's 
time  of  life  !  "  But  mamma  does  not  agree.  Betsey,  and  Sally,  and  Eliza, 
and  Patty  want  "mamma"  !  Mamma  wants  herself  as  she  looked  when  she 
was  Betsey's  age,  and  papa  fell  in  love  with  her.  So  I  am  distracted  to 
death.  I  have  a  great  mind  to  paint  her  with  a  long  beard  like  Salvator, 
and  say,  "  That's  my  idea  of  a  fit  accompaniment."  ' 

^  Benjamin  Robert  Haydon:  Correspondence  and  Table  Talk,  with  a  Memoir 
by  his  son  Frederic  Wordsworth  Haydon,  vol.  i.  pp.  oGO-Gl. 


26     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

As  Borrow  was  at  the  time  in  a  most  impoverished 
condition,  it  is  not  easy  to  believe  that  he  would  have 
wished  to  be  taken  at  his  word.  He  certainly  had  not 
a  thousand  pounds  to  lose.  But  he  did  undoubtedly, 
as  we  shall  see,  take  that  journey  on  foot  through  the 
south  of  France,  after  the  manner  of  an  earlier  vaga- 
bond of  literature  —  Oliver  Goldsmith.  Haydon  was 
to  be  far  too  much  taken  up  with  his  own  troubles  dur- 
ing the  coming  months  to  think  any  more  about  the 
Borrows  when  he  had  once  completed  the  portrait  of 
the  mayor,  which  he  had  done  by  July  of  this  year. 
Borrow's  letter  to  him  is,  however,  an  obvious  outcome 
of  a  remark  dropped  by  the  painter  on  the  occasion  of 
his  one  visit  to  his  studio  when  the  following  conversa- 
tion took  place : 

'  I  '11  stick  to  the  heroic,"  said  the  painter ;  '  I  now  and  then 
dabble  in  the  comic,  but  what  I  do  gives  me  no  pleasure,  the 
comic  is  so  low  ;  there  is  nothing  like  the  heroic.  I  am  engaged 
here  on  a  heroic  picture,"  said  he,  pointing  to  the  canvas ;  '  the 
subject  is  "  Pharaoh  dismissing  Moses  from  Egypt,"  after  the  last 
plague — the  death  of  the  first-born, — it  is  not  far  advanced — 
that  finished  figure  is  Moses" :  they  both  looked  at  the  canvas,  and 
I,  standing  behind,  took  a  modest  peep.  The  picture,  as  the 
painter  said,  was  not  far  advanced,  the  Pharaoh  was  merely  in 
outline ;  my  eye  was,  of  course,  attracted  by  the  finished  figure,  or 
rather  what  the  painter  had  called  the  finished  figure ;  but,  as  I 
gazed  upon  it,  it  appeared  to  me  that  there  was  something  de- 
fective— something  unsatisfactory  in  the  figure.  I  concluded, 
however,  that  the  painter,  notwithstanding  what  he  had  said,  had 
omitted  to  give  it  the  finishing  touch.  '  I  intend  this  to  be  my 
best  picture,""  said  the  painter  ;  '  what  I  want  now  is  a  face  for 
Pharaoh;  I  have  long  been  meditating  on  a  face  for  Pharaoh." 
Here,  chancing  to  cast  his  eye  upon  my  countenance,  of  whom  he 
had  scarcely  taken  any  manner  of  notice,  he  remained  with  his 
mouth  open  for  some  time.  '  Who  is  this  ? '  said  he  at  last.  '  Oh, 
this  is  my  brother,  I  forgot  to  introduce  him .' 


JOHN  THOMAS  EOKROW  27 

We  wish  that  the  acquaintance  had  extended  further, 
but  this  was  not  to  be.  Borrow  was  soon  to  commence 
the  wanderings  which  were  to  give  him  much  unsatis- 
factory fame,  and  the  pair  never  met  again.  Let  us, 
however,  return  to  John  Borrow,  who  accompanied 
Haydon  to  Norwich,  leaving  his  brother  for  some  time 
longer  to  the  tender  mercies  of  Sir  Richard  Phillips. 
John,  we  judge,  seems  to  have  had  plenty  of  shrewd- 
ness, and  was  not  without  a  sense  of  his  own  limita- 
tions. A  chance  came  to  him  of  commercial  success 
in  a  distant  land,  and  he  seized  that  chance.  A 
Norwich  friend,  Allday  Kerrison,  had  gone  out  to 
INIexico,  and  writing  from  Zacatecas  in  1825  asked 
John  to  join  him.  John  accepted.  His  salary  in  the 
service  of  the  Real  del  JMonte  Company  was  to  be 
£300  per  annum.  He  sailed  for  Mexico  in  1826, 
having  obtained  from  his  Colonel,  Lord  Orford, 
leave  of  absence  for  a  year,  it  being  understood  that 
renewals  of  that  leave  of  absence  might  be  granted. 
He  was  entitled  to  half-pay  as  a  Lieutenant  of  the 
West  Norfolk  Mihtia,  and  this  he  settled  upon  his 
mother  during  his  absence.  His  career  in  Mexico  was 
a  failure.  There  are  many  of  his  letters  to  his  mother 
and  brother  extant  which  tell  of  the  difficulties  of  his 
situation.  He  was  in  three  Mexican  companies  in 
succession,  and  was  about  to  be  sent  to  Columbia  to 
take  charge  of  a  mine  when  he  was  stricken  with  a 
fever,  and  died  at  Guanajuato  on  22nd  November 
1833.  He  had  far  exceeded  any  leave  that  his  Colonel 
could  in  fairness  grant,  and  before  his  death  his  name 
had  been  taken  off  the  army  rolls.  The  question  of 
his  pay  produced  a  long  correspondence,  which  can  be 
found  in  the  archives  of  the  Rolls  Office.  I  have  the 
original  drafts  of  these  letters  in  Borrow's  handwriting. 


28     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

The  first  letter  by  Borrow  is  dated  8th  September 
1831 ;  it  is  better  to  give  the  correspondence  in 
its  order.^  The  letters  speak  for  themselves,  and 
require  no  comment. 

I 

To  the  Rt.  Hon.  The  Secretary  at  War 

Willow  Lane,  Norwich,  September  8,  1831. 

Sir, — I  take  the  liberty  of  troubling  you  with  these  lines  for 
the  purpose  of  enquiring  whether  there  is  any  objection  to  the 
issuing  of  the  disembodied  allowance  of  my  brother  Lieut.  John 
Borrow  of  the  Welsh  Norfolk  Militia,  who  is  at  present  abroad. 
I  do  tliis  by  the  advice  of  the  Army  Pay  Office,  a  power  of 
Attorney  having  been  granted  to  me  by  Lieut.  Borrow  to  receive 
the  said  allowance  for  him.  I  beg  leave  to  add  that  my  brother 
was  present  at  the  last  training  of  his  regiment,  that  he  went 
abroad  with  the  leave  of  his  Commanding  Officer,  which  leave  of 
absence  has  never  been  recalled,  that  he  has  sent  home  the  neces- 
sary affidavits,  and  that  there  is  no  clause  in  the  Pay  and  Clothing 
Act  to  authorize  the  stoppage  of  his  allowance.  I  have  the 
honor  to  remain,  Sir,  your  most  obedient,  humble  servant, 

George  Borrow. 


II 
To  the  Right  Hon.  The  Secretary  at  War 

Willow  Lane,  Norwich,  Vith  Septr.  1831. 

Sir, — I  have  to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  No.  33,063,  dated 
16th  inst.,  from  the  War  Office,  in  which  I  am  informed  that  the 
Office  does  not  feel  authorized  to  give  instructions  for  the  issue  of 
the  arrears  of  disembodied  allowance  claimed  by  my  brother 
Lieut.  Borrow  of  the  West  Norfolk,  until  he  attend  the  next 
training  of  his  regiment,  and  I  now  beg  leave  to  ask  the  following 

^  From  what  are  called  tlie  '  War  Office  Weeded  Papers,  Old  Series,  No. 
33,0G3/17,'  and  succeeding  numbers. 


JOHN  THOMAS  BORROW  29 

question,  and  to  request  that  I  may  receive  an  answer  with  all 
convenient  speed.  What  farther  right  to  his  present  arrears  of 
disembodied  allowance  will  Lieut.  Borrow's  appearance  at  the 
next  training  of  his  regiment  confer  upon  him,  and  provided  there 
is  no  authority  at  present  for  ordering  the  payment  of  those 
arrears,  by  what  authority  will  the  War  Office  issue  instructions 
for  the  payment  of  the  same,  after  his  arrival  in  this  country  and 
attendance  at  the  training  ?  Sir,  provided  Lieut.  Borrow  is  not 
entitled  to  his  arrears  of  disembodied  allowance  at  the  present 
moment,  he  will  be  entitled  to  them  at  no  future  period,  and  I 
was  to  the  last  degree  surprised  at  the  receipt  of  an  answer  which 
tends  to  involve  the  office  in  an  inextricable  dilemma,  for  it  is  in 
fact  a  full  acknowledgment  of  the  justice  of  Lieutenant  Borrow's 
claims,  and  a  refusal  to  satisfy  them  until  a  certain  time,  which 
instantly  brings  on  the  question,  'By  what  authority  does  the 
War  Office  seek  to  detain  the  disembodied  allowance  of  an  officer, 
to  which  he  is  entitled  by  Act  of  Parliament,  a  moment  after  it 
has  become  due  and  is  legally  demanded  ? '  If  it  be  objected  that 
it  is  not  legally  demanded,  I  reply  that  the  affidavits  filled  up  in 
the  required  form  are  in  the  possession  of  the  Pay  Office,  and  also 
a  power  of  Attorney  in  the  Spanish  language,  together  with  a 
Notarial  translation,  which  power  of  Attorney  has  been  declared 
by  the  Solicitor  of  the  Treasury  to  be  legal  and  sufficient.  To 
that  part  of  the  Official  letter  relating  to  my  brother's  appearance 
at  the  next  training  I  have  to  reply,  that  I  believe  he  is  at  present 
lying  sick  in  the  Mountains  above  Vera  Cruz,  the  pest-house  of 
the  New  World,  and  that  the  last  time  I  heard  from  him  I  was 
informed  that  it  would  be  certain  death  for  him  to  descend  into 
the  level  country,  even  were  he  capable  of  the  exertion,  for  the 
fever  was  then  raging  there.  Full  six  months  have  elapsed  since 
he  prepared  to  return  to  his  native  country,  having  received  infor- 
mation that  there  was  a  probability  that  his  regiment  would  be 
embodied,  (but)  the  hand  of  God  overtook  him  on  his  route.  He 
is  the  son.  Sir,  of  an  Officer  who  served  his  King  abroad  and  at 
home  for  upwards  of  half  a  century ;  he  had  intended  his 
disembodied  allowance  for  the  use  of  his  widowed  and  infirm 
mother,  but  it  must  now  be  transmitted  to  him  for  his  own 
support  until  he  can  arrive  in  England.  But,  Sir,  I  do  not  wish 
to  excite  compassion  in  his  behalf,  all  I  request  is  that  he  may 


30     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

have  justice  done  him,  and  if  it  be,  I  shall  be  informed  in  the  next 
letter,  that  the  necessary  order  has  been  given  to  the  Pay  Office 
for  the  issue  of  his  arrears.  I  have  the  honor  to  remain,  Sir,  your 
most  obedient,  humble  servant, 

George  Bokiiow. 


Ill 
To  the  Right  Hon.  The  Secretary  at  War 

Norwich,  Now.  24,  1831. 

Sill, — Not  having  been  favoured  with  an  answer  to  the  letter 
which  I  last  addressed  to  you  concerning  the  arrears  of  disem- 
bodied allowance  due  to  Lieut.  John  Borrow  of  the  West  Norfolk 
Militia,  I  again  take  the  liberty  of  submitting  this  matter  to  your 
consideration.  More  than  six  months  have  elapsed  since  by  virtue 
of  a  power  of  attorney  granted  to  me  by  Lieut.  Borrow,  I  made 
demand  at  the  army  Pay  Office  for  a  portion  of  those  arrears, 
beino-  the  amount  of  two  affidavits  which  were  produced,  but 
owing  to  the  much  unnecessary  demur  which  ensued,  chiefly  with 
respect  to  the  power  of  Attorney,  since  declared  to  be  valid,  that 
demand  has  not  hitherto  been  satisiied.  I  therefore  am  compelled 
to  beg  that  an  order  may  be  issued  to  the  Pay  Office  for  the 
payment  to  me  of  the  sums  specified  in  the  said  affidavits,  that 
the  amount  may  be  remitted  to  Lieut.  Borrow,  he  being  at  present 
in  great  need  thereof.  If  it  be  answered  that  Lieut.  Borrow  was 
absent  at  the  last  training  of  his  regiment,  and  that  he  is  not 
entitled  to  any  arrears  of  pay,  I  must  beg  leave  to  observe  that 
the  demand  was  legally  made  many  months  previous  to  the  said 
training,  and  cannot  now  be  set  aside  by  his  non-appearance, 
which  arose  from  unavoidable  necessity ;  he  having  for  the  last 
year  been  lying  sick  in  one  of  the  provinces  of  New  Spain.  And 
now.  Sir,  I  will  make  bold  to  inquire  whether  Lieut.  Borrow,  the 
son  of  an  Officer,  who  served  his  country  abroad  and  at  home,  for 
upwards  of  fifty  years,  is  to  lose  his  commission  for  being  incap- 
able, from  a  natural  visitation,  of  attending  at  the  training ;  if  it 
be  replied  in  the  affirmative,  I  have  only  to  add  that  his  case  will 
be  a  cruelly  hard  one.     But  I  hope  and  trust.  Sir,  that  taking  all 


JOHN  THOMAS  BORROW  31 

these  circumstances  into  consideration  you  will  not  yet  cause  his 
name  to  be  stricken  off'  the  list,  and  that  you  will  permit  him  to 
retain  his  commission  in  the  event  of  his  arriving  in  England 
with  all  the  speed  which  his  health  of  body  will  permit,  and  that 
to  enable  him  so  to  do  his  arrears^  you  will  forthwith  give  an 
order  for  the  payment  of  his  arrears.  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  Sir, 
your  very  humble  servant, 

Geokge  Bohkow. 

IV 
To  the  Rt.  Hon.  The  Secretary  at  War 

Norwich,  Beer.  1.3,  1831. 

Sill, — I  have  just  received  a  letter  from  my  brother  Lieu- 
tenant J.  Borrow,  from  which  it  appears  he  has  had  leave  of 
absence  from  his  Colonel,  the  Earl  of  Orford,  up  to  the  present 
year.  He  says  'in  a  letter  dated  Wolterton,  21st  June  1828, 
Lord  Orford  writes :  "  should  you  want  a  further  leave  I  will  not 
object  to  it."  20th  May  1829  says  :  "  I  am  much  obliged  to  you 
for  a  letter  of  the  18th  March,  and  shall  be  glad  to  allow  you 
leave  of  absence  for  a  twelvemonth."  I  enclose  his  last  letter 
from  Brussels,  August  6,  1829.  At  the  end  it  gives  very  evident 
proof  that  my  remaining  in  Mexico  was  not  only  by  his  Lordship's 
permission,  hut  even  hy  his  advice.""  Sir,  if  you  should  require  it 
I  will  transmit  this  last  letter  of  the  Earl  of  Orford's,  which  my 
brother  has  sent  to  me,  but  beg  leave  to  observe  that  no  blame 
can  be  attached  to  his  Lordship  in  this  case,  he  having  from  a 
multiplicity  of  important  business  doubtless  forgotten  these  minor 
matters.  I  hope  now.  Sir,  that  you  will  have  no  further  objection 
to  issue  an  order  for  the  payment  of  that  portion  of  my  brother's 
arrears  specified  in  the  two  affidavits  in  the  possession  of  the  Pay- 
master General.  By  the  unnecessary  obstacles  which  have  been 
flung  in  my  brothers  way  in  obtaining  his  arrears  he  has  been 
subjected  to  great  inconvenience  and  distress.  An  early  answer 
on  this  point  will  much  oblige,  Sir,  your  most  obedient,  humble 
servant,  Geokge  Borrow. 

^  {'  his  arrears '  are  ruled  out.)     Note  by  War  Office. 


32     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

V 

To  the  Rt.  Hon.  The  Secretary  at  War 

Willow  Lane,  Norwich,  May  24,  1833. 

Sir, — I  take  the  liberty  of  addressing  you  for  the  purpose  of 
requesting  that  an  order  be  given  to  the  Paymaster  General  for 
the  issue  of  the  arrears  of  pay  of  my  brother  Lieutenant  John 
Borrow  of  the  West  Norfolk  Militia,  whose  agent  I  am  by  virtue 
of  certain  powers  of  Attorney,  and  also  for  the  continuance  of  the 
payment  of  his  disembodied  allowance.     Lieutenant  Borrow  was 
not  present  at  the  last  training  of  his  Regiment,  being  in  Mexico 
at  the  time,  and  knowing  nothing  of  the  matter.     I  beg  leave  to 
observe  that  no  official  nor  other  letter  was  dispatched  to  him  by 
the  adjutant  to  give  him  notice  of  the  event,  nor  was  I,  his  agent, 
informed  of  it,  he  therefore  cannot  have  forfeited  his  arrears  and 
disembodied  allowance.      He   was  moreover   for    twelve    months 
previous  to  the  training,  and  still  is,  so  much  indisposed  from  the 
effects  of  an  attack  of  the  yellow  fever,  that  his  return  would  be 
attended  with  great  danger,  which  can  be  proved  by  the  certificate 
of  a  Medical  Gentleman  practising  in  Norwich,  who  was  consulted 
from  Mexico.     Lieutenants  Harper  and  Williams,  of  the  same 
Regiment,  have  recovered  their  pay  and  arrears,  although  absent 
at  the  last  training,  therefore  it  is  clear  and  manifest  that  no 
objection  can  be  made  to  Lieut.  Borrow's  claim,  who  went  abroad 
with  his  Commanding  Officer's  permission,  which  those  Gentlemen 
did  not.     In  conclusion  I  have  to  add  that  I  have  stated  nothing 
which  I  cannot  substantiate,  and  that  I  court  the  most  minute 
scrutiny  into  the  matter.     I   have  the   honor   to    be.  Sir,  your 
most  obedient  and  most  humble  servant, 

George  Borrow. 

The  last  of  these  letters  is  in  another  handwriting 
than  that  of  Borrow,  who  by  this  time  had  started  for 
St.  Petersburg  for  the  Bible  Society.  The  officials 
were  adamant.  To  one  letter  the  AVar  Office  replied 
that  they  could  not  consider  any  claims  until  Lieutenant 


GEORGE  BORROW 


JarroUi  tlr  Sons 


From  a  portrait  by  his  brother,  John  Thomas  Borrow,  taken  in  early  youth 
when  his  hair  was  black.      This   portrait  is  now  in    the  National    Portrait 

Gallery,  London. 


32 


JOHN  THOMAS  BORROW  83 

Borrow  of  the  West  Norfolk  Militia  should  have  arrived 
in  England  to  attend  the  training  of  his  regiment. 
These  five  letters  are,  as  v^e  have  said,  in  the  Rolls 
Office,  although  the  indefatigable  Professor  Knapp 
seems  to  have  dropped  across  only  two  of  them  there. 
Their  chief  interest  is  in  that  they  are  the  earliest  in 
order  of  date  of  the  hitherto  known  letters  of  Borrow. 
There  is  one  further  letter  on  the  subject  written 
somewhat  later  by  old  Mrs.  Borrow.  She  also  appeals 
to  the  War  Office  for  her  son's  allowance.^  It  would 
seem  clear  that  the  arrears  were  never  paid. 

To  the  Rt.  Hon.  The  Earl  of  Orford 

Willow  Lane,  Norwich,  26  May  1834. 

My  Lord, — I  a  few  days  since  received  the  distressing  intelli- 
gence of  the  death  of  my  dear  son  John,  a  lieutenant  in  your 
Lordship's  West  Norfolk  Regiment  of  Militia,  after  the  sufferings 
of  a  protracted  and  painful  illness ;  the  melancholy  event  took 
place  on  the  22nd  November  last  at  Guanajuato  in  Mexico. 
Having  on  the  former  irreparable  loss  of  my  dear  husband  experi- 
enced your  Lordship's  kindness,  I  am  induced  to  trespass  on  your 
goodness  in  a  like  case  of  heavy  affliction,  by  requesting  that  you 
will  be  pleased  to  make  the  necessary  application  to  the  Secretary 
at  War  to  authorise  me  to  receive  the  arrears  of  pay  due  to  my 
late  son,  viz, :  ten  months  to  the  period  of  the  training,  and  from 
that  time  to  the  day  of  his  decease,  for  which  I  am  informed  it  is 
requisite  to  have  your  Lordship's  certificate  of  leave  of  absence 
from  the  said  training.  The  amount  is  a  matter  of  great  import- 
ance to  me  in  my  very  limited  circumstances,  having  been  at  con- 
siderable expense  in  fitting  him  out,  which,  though  at  the  time  it 
occasioned  me  much  pecuniary  inconvenience,  I  thought  it  my 
duty  to  exert  all  my  means  to  accomplish,  my  present  distress  of 

^  This  letter  is  from  the  original   among  the   Borrow    Papers   in   my 
possession. 

C 


34     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

mind  is  the  greater  having  to  struggle  with  my  feelings  without 
the  consolation  and  advice  of  my  son  George,  who  is  at  this  time 
at  St.  Petersburg.  Your  Lordship  will,  I  trust,  pardon  the 
liberty  I  am  taking,  and  the  trouble  I  am  giving,  and  allow  for 
the  feelings  of  an  afflicted  mother.  I  have  the  honor  to  be  your 
Lordship's  most  obedient  servant,  Ann  Borrow. 

I  have  said  that  there  are  letters  of  John  Borrow's 
extant.  Fragments  of  these  will  be  found  in  Dr. 
Knapp's  book.  These  show  a  keen  intelligence,  great 
practicality,  and  common  sense.  George — in  1829 — had 
asked  his  brother  as  to  joining  him  in  Mexico.  '  If 
the  country  is  soon  settled  I  shall  say  "  yes," '  John 
answers.     With  equal  wisdom  he  says  to  his  brother, 

*  Do  not  enter  the  army  ;  it  is  a  bad  spec'  In  this 
same  year,  1829,  John  writes  to  ask  whether  his  mother 
and  brother  are  '  still  living  in  that  windy  house  of  old 
King's ;  it  gives  me  the  rheumatism  to  think  of  it.' 
In  1830  he  writes  to  his  mother  that  he  wishes  his 
brother  were  making  money.  '  Neither  he  nor  I  have 
any  luck,  he  works  hard  and  remains  poor.'  In 
February  of  1831  John  writes  to  George  suggesting 
that  he  should  endeavour  to  procure  a  commission  in 
the  regiment,  and  in  July  of  the  same  year  to  try  the 
law  again : 

I  am  convinced  that  your  want  of  success  in  life  is  more  owing 
to  your  being  unlike  other  people  than  to  any  other  cause. 

John,  as  we  have  seen,  died  in  Mexico  of  fever. 
George  was  at  St.  Petersburg  working  for  the  Bible 
Society  when  his  mother  writes  from  Norwich  to  tell 
him  the  news.  John  had  died  on  22nd  November 
1833.      '  You    are    now   my   only   hope,'   she   writes, 

*  .  .  do  not  grieve,  my  dear  George.  I  trust  we 
shall  all  meet  in  heaven.     Put  a  crape  on  your  hat  for 


JOHN  THOMAS  BORROW 


35 


some  time.'  Had  George  Sorrow's  brother  lived  it 
might  have  meant  very  much  in  his  Hfe.  There  might 
have  been  nephews  and  nieces  to  soften  the  asperity 
of  his  later  years.  Who  can  say  ?  Meanwhile, 
Lavengro  contains  no  happier  pages  than  those  con- 
cerned with  this  dearly  loved  brother. 


-  •  h 


GEORGE  BORROWS  BIRTHPLACE  AT  DUMPLING  GREEN 

From  a  drawing  hy  Fortunino  Matania 


CHAPTER   IV 

A  WANDERING  CHILDHOOD 

We  do  not  need  to  inquire  too  deeply  as  to  Sorrow's 
possible  gypsy  origin  in  order  to  account  for  his  vaga- 
bond propensities.  The  lives  of  his  parents  before  his 
birth,  and  the  story  of  his  own  boyhood,  sufficiently 
account  for  the  dominant  tendency  in  Borrow.  His 
father  and  mother  were  married  in  1793.  Almost 
every  year  they  changed  their  domicile.  In  1801  a 
son  was  born  to  them — they  still  continued  to  change 
their  domicile.  Captain  Borrow  followed  his  regiment 
from  place  to  place,  and  his  family  accompanied  him  on 
these  journeys.  Dover,  Colchester,  Sandgate,  Canter- 
bury, Chelmsford — these  are  some  of  the  towns  where 
the  Borrows  sojourned.  It  was  the  merest  accident — 
the  Peace  of  Amiens,  to  be  explicit — that  led  them 
back  to  East  Dereham  in  1808,  so  that  the  second  son 
was  born  in  his  grandfather's  house.  George  was  only 
a  month  old  when  he  was  carried  off  to  Colchester ; 
in  1804  he  was  in  the  barracks  of  Kent,  in  1805  of 
Sussex,  in  1806  at  Hastings,  in  1807  at  Canterbury, 
and  so  on.  The  indefatigable  Dr.  Knapp  has  recorded 
every  detail  for  all  who  love  the  minute,  the  meticu- 
lous, in  biography.  The  whole  of  the  first  thirteen 
years  of  Borrow 's  life  is  filled  up  in  this  way,  until  in 
1816  he  and  his  parents  found  a  home  of  some  per- 
manence in  Norwich.     In  1809-10  they  were  at  East 

3S 


A  WANDERING  CHILDHOOD  37 

Dereham,  in  1810-11  at  Norman  Cross,  in  1812 
wandering  from  Harwich  to  Sheffield,  and  in  1813 
wandering  from  Sheffield  to  Edinburgh ;  in  1814  they 
were  in  Norwich,  and  in  1815-16  in  Ireland.  In  this 
last  year  they  returned  to  Norwich,  the  father  to 
retire  on  full  pay,  and  to  live  in  Willow  Lane  until 
his  death.  How  could  a  boy,  whose  first  twelve  years 
of  life  had  been  made  up  of  such  continual  wandering, 
have  been  other  than  a  restless,  nomad-loving  man, 
envious  of  the  free  life  of  the  gypsies,  for  whom  alone 
in  later  life  he  seemed  to  have  kindliness  ?  Those 
twelve  years  are  to  most  boys  merely  the  making  of  a 
moral  foundation  for  good  or  ill ;  to  Borrow  they  were 
everything,  and  at  least  four  personalities  captured  his 
imagination  during  that  short  span,  as  we  see  if  we 
follow  his  juvenile  wanderings  more  in  detail  to  Dere- 
ham, Norman  Cross,  Edinburgh,  and  Clonmel,  and  the 
personalities  are  Lady  Fenn,  Ambrose  Smith,  David 
Haggart,  and  Murtagh.  Let  us  deal  with  each  in 
turn  : 

A.  East  Dereham  and  Lady  Fenn. — In  our 
opening  chapter  we  referred  to  the  lines  in  Lavengi^o, 
where  Borrow  recalls  his  early  impressions  of  his  native 
town,  or  at  least  the  town  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
hamlet  in  which  he  was  bom.  Borrow,  we  may  be  sure, 
would  have  repudiated  'Dumpling  Green'  if  he  could. 
The  name  had  a  humorous  suggestion.  To  this  day 
they  call  boys  from  Norfolk  '  Norfolk  Dumplings '  in 
the  neighbouring  shires.  But  East  Dereham  was 
something  to  be  proud  of.  In  it  had  died  the  writer 
who,  through  the  greater  part  of  Sorrow's  life,  remained 
the  favourite  poet  of  that  half  of  England  which  pro- 
fessed the  Evangelical  creed  in  which  Borrow  was 
brought  up.     Cowper  was  buried  here  by  the  side  of 

48337 


38     GEOKGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Mary  Unwin,  and  every  Sunday  little  George  would 
see  his  tomb  just  as  Henry  Kingsley  was  wont  to  see 
the  tombs  in  Chelsea  Old  Church.  The  fervour  of 
devotion  to  Cowper's  memory  that  obtained  in  those 
early  days  must  have  been  a  stimulus  to  the  boy,  who 
from  the  first  had  ambitions  far  beyond  anything  that 
he  was  to  achieve.  Here  was  his  first  lesson.  The 
second  came  from  Lady  Fenn — a  more  vivid  impres- 
sion for  the  child.  Twenty  years  before  Borrow  was 
born  Cowper  had  sung  her  merits  in  his  verse.  She  and 
her  golden-headed  cane  are  commemorated  in  Lavengi^o. 
Dame  Eleanor  Fenn  had  made  a  reputation  in  her 
time.  As  '  Mrs.  Teachwell '  and  '  Mrs.  Lovechild  '  she 
had  published  books  for  the  young  of  a  most  improv- 
ing character,  The  Child's  Grammar,  The  Mother's 
Gravimar,  A  Short  History  of  Insects,  and  Cobwebs  to 
Catch  Flies  being  of  the  number.  The  forty-fourth 
edition  of  The  Child's  Grammar  by  Mrs.  Lovechild 
appeared  in  1851,  and  the  twenty-second  edition  of 
The  Mothers  Grammar  in  1849.  But  it  is  her 
husband  that  her  name  most  recalls  to  us.  Sir  John 
Fenn  gave  us  the  delightful  Paston  Letters — of  which 
Horace  Walpole  said  that  '  they  make  all  other  letters 
not  worth  reading.'  Walpole  described  '  Mr.  Fenn  of 
East  Dereham  in  Norfolk  '  as  '  a  smatterer  in  antiquity, 
but  a  very  good  sort  of  man.'  Fenn,  who  held  the 
original  documents  of  the  Letters,  sent  his  first  two 
volumes,  when  published,  to  Buckingham  Palace,  and 
the  King  acknowledged  the  gifts  by  knighting  the 
editor,  who,  however,  died  in  1794,  before  George 
Borrow  was  born.  His  widow  survived  until  1813, 
and  Borrow  was  in  his  seventh  or  eighth  year  when  he 
cauglit  these  notable  glimpses  of  his  '  Lady  Bounti- 
ful,' who  lived  in  '  the  half-aristocratic  mansion  '  of  the 


A  WANDERING  CHILDHOOD  39 

town.  But  we  know  next  to  nothing  of  Borrow  in 
East  Dereham,  from  which  indeed  he  departed  in  his 
eighth  year.  There  are,  however,  interesting  references 
to  his  memories  of  the  place  in  Lavengro.  The  first 
is  where  he  recalls  to  his  author  friend,  who  had  offered 
him  comet  wine  of  1811,  his  recollection  of  gazing  at 

the  comet  from  the  market-place  of  'pretty  D ' 

in  1811.^  The  second  reference  is  when  he  goes  to 
church  with  the  gypsies  and  dreams  of  an  incident  in 
his  childhood : 

It  appeared  as  if  I  had  fallen  asleep  in  the  pew  of  the  old 
church  of  pretty  Dereham.  I  had  occasionally  done  so  when  a 
child,  and  had  suddenly  woke  up.  Yes,  surely,  I  had  heen  asleep 
and  had  woke  up ;  but  no !  if  I  had  been  asleep  I  had  been 
waking  in  my  sleep,  struggling,  striving,  learning  and  unlearning 
in  my  sleep.  Years  had  rolled  away  whilst  I  had  been  asleep — 
ripe  fruit  had  fallen,  green  fruit  had  come  on  whilst  I  had  been 
asleep — how  circumstances  had  altered,  and  above  all  myself 
whilst  1  had  been  asleep.  No,  I  had  not  been  asleep  in  the  old 
church  !  I  was  in  a  pew,  it  is  true,  but  not  the  pew  of  black 
leather  in  which  I  sometimes  fell  asleep  in  days  of  yore,  but  in  a 
strange  pew  ;  and  then  my  companions,  they  were  no  longer  those 
of  days  of  yore.  I  was  no  longer  with  my  respectable  father 
and  mother,  and  my  dear  brother,  but  with  the  gypsy  cral  and 
his  wife,  and  the  gigantic  Tawno,  the  Antinous  of  the  dusky 
people.  And  what  was  I  myself?  No  longer  an  innocent  child 
but  a  moody  man,  bearing  in  my  face,  as  I  knew  well,  the  marks 
of  my  strivings  and  strugglings ;  of  what  I  had  learnt  and 
unlearnt. 

But  Borrow,  as  I  have  said,  left  Dereham  in  his 
eighth  year,  and  the  author  of  a  History  of  East  Dereham 

^  This  episode,  rescued  from  the  manuscript  that  came  into  Dr.  Knapp's 
possession,  is  only  to  be  found  in  his  Life  of  Borrow.  He  does  not  include  it 
in  his  edition  of  Lavengro.  That  Borrow  revisited  East  Dereham  in  later 
manhood  we  learn  from  Mr.  S.  H.  Baldrey.     See  p.  420. 


40     GEORGE  BORKOW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

thus  accounts  for  several  inaccuracies  in  his  memory, 
both  as  to  persons  and  things. 

B.  Norman  Cross  and  Ambrose  Smith. — In  Laven- 
gro  Borrow  recalls  childish  memories  of  Canterbury  and 
of  Hythe,  at  which  latter  place  he  saw  the  church  vault 
filled  with  ancient  skulls  as  we  may  see  it  there  to-day. 
And  after  that  the  book  which  impressed  itself  most 
vividly  upon  his  memory  was  Robinson  Crusoe.     How 
much  he  came  to  revere  Defoe  the  pages  of  Lavengro 
most  eloquently  reveal  to  us.     '  Hail  to  thee,  spirit  of 
Defoe  !     What  does  not  my  own  poor  self  owe  to  thee  ? ' 
In  1810-11  his  father  was  in  the  barracks  at  Norman 
Cross  in  Huntingdonshire.     Here  the  Government  had 
bought  a  large  tract  of  land,  and  built  upon  it  a  huge 
wooden  prison,  and  overlooking  this  a  substantial  barrack 
also  of  wood,  the  only  brick  building  on  the  land  being 
the  house  of  the  Commandant.     The  great  building 
was  destined  for  the  soldiers  taken  prisoners   in   the 
French  wars.     The  place  was  constructed  to  hold  5000 
prisoners,  and   500   men   were  employed  by  the  War 
Office  in  1 808  upon  its  construction.     The  first  batch 
of  prisoners  were  the  victims  of  the  battle  of  Vimeiro 
in  that  year.     Borrow's  description  of  the  hardships  of 
the  prisoners  has  been  called  in   question   by  a  later 
writer,  Arthur  Brown,^  who  denies  the  story  of  bad 
food  and  '  straw-plait  hunts,'  and  charges  Borrow  with 
recklessness  of  statement.     '  What  could  have  been  the 
matter  with  the  man  to  write  such  stuff  as  this  ? '  asks 

1  The  French  Prisoners  of  Norman  Cross :  A  Tale,  by  the  Rev.  Arthur 
Brown,  Rector  of  Catfield,  Norfolk.  London :  Hodder  Brothers,  18  New 
Bridge  Street,  E.C.,  1895.  Mr.  Brown  remarks  that  there  were  sixteen 
casernes,  whereas  Borrow  says  in  Lavengro  that  there  were  five  or  six.  '  They 
looked,'  he  says,  'from  outside  exactly  like  a  vast  congeries  of  large,  high 
carpenter's  shops,  with  roofs  of  glaring  red  tiles,  and  surrounded  by  wooden 
palisades,  very  lofty  and  of  prodigious  strength.' 


A  WANDERING  CHILDHOOD  41 

Brown  in  reference  to  Borrows  story  of  bad  meat  and 
bad  bread  :  which  was  not  treating  a  great  author  with 
quite  sufficient  reverence.  Borrow  was  but  recalling 
memories  of  childhood,  a  period  when  one  swallow  does 
make  a  summer.  He  had  doubtless  seen  examples  of 
what  he  described,  although  it  may  not  have  been  the 
normal  condition  of  things.  Brown's  own  description 
of  the  Norman  Cross  prison  was  interwoven  with  a 
love  romance,  in  which  a  French  officer  fell  in  love  with 
a  girl  of  the  neighbouring  village  of  Yaxley,  and  after 
Waterloo  returned  to  England  and  married  her.  When 
he  wrote  his  story  a  very  old  man  was  still  living  at 
Yaxley,  who  remembered,  as  a  boy,  having  often  seen 
the  prisoners  on  the  road,  some  very  well  dressed,  some 
in  tatters,  a  few  in  uniform.  The  milestone  is  still 
pointed  out  which  marked  the  limit  beyond  which  the 
officer-prisoners  might  not  walk.  The  buildings  were 
destroyed  in  1814,  when  all  the  prisoners  were  sent 
home,  and  the  house  of  the  Commandant,  now  a  private 
residence,  alone  remains  to  recall  this  episode  in  our 
history.  But  Borrow's  most  vivid  memory  of  Norman 
Cross  was  connected  with  the  viper  given  to  him  by  an 
old  man,  who  had  rendered  it  harmless  by  removing 
the  fangs.  It  was  the  possession  of  this  tame  viper 
that  enabled  the  child  of  eight — this  was  Borrow's  age 
at  the  time — to  impress  the  gypsies  that  he  met  soon 
afterwards,  and  particularly  the  boy  Ambrose  Smith, 
whom  Borrow  introduced  to  the  world  in  Lavengro  as 
Jasper  Petulengro.  Borrow's  frequent  meetings  with 
Petulengro  ^  are  no  doubt  many  of  them  mythical.  He 
was  an  imaginative  writer,  and  Dr.  Knapp's  worst 
banality  is  to  suggest  that  he  '  invented  nothing.'     But 

^  The  Journal  of  the  Gypsy  Lore  Society  teaches  me  that  the  name  should 
be  spelt  Petulengro. 


42     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Petulengro  was  a  very  real  person,  who  lived  the  usual 
roving  gyps)'^  life.     There  is  no  reason  to  assume  other- 
wise than  that  Borrow  did  actually  meet  him  at  Norman 
Cross  when  he  was  eight  years  old,  and  Ambrose  a  year 
younger,  and  not  thirteen  as  Borrow  states.    In  the  ori- 
ginal manuscript  of  Lavengro  in  my  possession,  as  in  the 
copy  of  it  in  Mrs.  Borrow's  handwriting  that  came  into 
the  possession  of  Dr.  Knapp, '  Ambrose '  is  given  instead 
of '  Jasper,'  and  the  name  was  altered  as  an  afterthought. 
It  is  of  course  possible  that  Borrow  did  not  actually 
meet  Jasper  until  his  arrival  in  Norwich,  for  in  the  first 
half  of  the  nineteenth  century  various  gypsy  families 
were  in  the  habit  of  assembling  their  carts  and  staking 
their  tents  on  the  heights   above  Norwich,  known  as 
JMousehold  Heath,  that  glorious  tract  of  country  that 
has  been  rendered  memorable  in  history  by  the  tragic 
life  of  Kett  the  tanner,  and  has  been  immortalised  in 
painting  by  Turner  and  Crome.     Here  were  assembled 
the  Smiths  and  Hemes  and  Boswells,  names  familiar 
to  every  student  of  gypsy  lore.     Jasper  Petulengro,  as 
Borrow  calls  him,  or  Ambrose  Smith,  to  give  him  his 
real  name,  was  the  son  of  Faden  Smith,  and  his  name 
of  Ambrose  was    derived   from   his   uncle,   Ambrose 
Smith,    who    was    transported    for   stealing    harness. 
Ambrose  was  twice  married,  and  it  was  his  second  wife, 
Sanspirella  Heme,  who  comes  into  the  Borrow  story. 
He  had  families  by  both  his  wives.     Ambrose  had  an 
extraordinary  varied  career.     It  will  be  remembered  by 
readers  of  the  Zincali  that  when  he  visited  Borrow  at 
Oulton  in  1842  he  complained  that '  There  is  no  living  for 
the  poor  people,  brother,  the  chokengres  (police)  pursue 
us  from  place  to  place,  and  the  gorgios  are   become 
either  so  poor  or  miserly  that  they  grudge  our  cattle 
a  bite  of  grass  by  the  wayside,  and  ourselves  a  yard  of 


A  WANDERING  CHILDHOOD  43 

ground  to  light  a  fire  upon.'  After  a  time  Ambrose 
left  the  eastern  counties  and  crossed  to  Ireland.  In 
1868  he  went  to  Scotland,  and  there  seems  to  have 
revived  his  fortunes.  In  1878  he  and  his  family  were 
encamped  at  Knockenhair  Park,  about  a  mile  from 
Dunbar.  Here  Queen  Victoria,  who  was  staying  at 
Broxmouth  Park  near  by  with  the  Dowager  Duchess 
of  Roxburghe,  became  interested  in  the  gypsies,  and 
paid  them  a  visit. ^  This  was  in  the  summer  of  1878. 
Ambrose  was  then  a  very  old  man.  He  died  in  the 
following  October.  His  wife,  Sanspi  or  Sanspirella, 
received  a  message  of  sympathy  from  the  Queen.  Very 
shortly  after  Ambrose's  death,  however,  most  of  the 
family  went  off  to  America,  where  doubtless  they  are  now 
scattered,  many  of  them,  it  may  be,  leading  successful 
lives,  utterly  oblivious  of  the  association  of  one  of  their 
ancestors  with  Borrow  and  his  great  book.  Ambrose 
Smith  was  buried  in  Dunbar  cemetery,  the  Christian 
service  being  read  over  his  grave,  and  his  friends  erected 

'  See  In  Gipsy  Tents,  by  Francis  Hindes  Groome,  p.  17.  The  late  Queen 
herself  writes  {More  Leaves  frotn  the  Journal  of  a  Life  in  the  Highlands,  Smith, 
Elder  and  Co.,  1884,  p.  370),  under  the  date  Monday,  August  2Cth  :  'At 
half-past  three  started  with  Beatrice,  Leopold,  and  the  Duchess  in  the  landau 
and  four,  the  Duke,  Lady  Ely,  General  Ponsonby,  and  Mr.  Yorke  going-  in 
the  second  carriage,  and  Lord  Haddington  riding  the  whole  way.  We  drove 
through  the  west  part  of  Dunbar,  which  was  very  full,  and  where  we  were 
literally  pelted  with  small  nosegays,  till  the  carriage  was  full  of  them  ;  then 
for  some  distance  past  the  village  of  Belhaven,  Knockindale  Hill  (Knocken- 
hair Park),  where  were  stationed  in  their  best  attire  the  queen  of  the 
gypsies,  an  oldish  woman  with  a  yellow  handkerchief  on  her  head,  and 
a  youngish,  very  dark,  and  truly  gypsy-like  woman  in  velvet  and  a  red 
shawl,  and  another  woman.  The  queen  is  a  thorough  gypsy,  with  a  scarlet 
cloak  and  a  yellow  handkerchief  around  her  head.  Men  in  red  hunting- 
coats,  all  very  dark,  and  all  standing  on  a  platform  here,  bowed  and  waved 
their  handkerchiefs.  George  Smith  told  Mr.  Myers  that  "the  queen" 
was  Sanspirella,  that  the  ''gypsy-like  woman  in  velvet  and  a  red  shawl" 
was  Bidi,  and  the  other  woman  Delaia.  The  men  were  Ambrose,  Tommy, 
and  Alfred.' 


44     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

a  stone  to  him  which  bears  the  following  inscription, 
the  hymn  not  being  very  accurately  rendered : 

In  Memory  of 

Ambrose  Smith,  who  died  22nd 

October  1878,  aged  74-  years. 

Also 

Thomas,  his  son, 

who  died  28th  May  1879,  aged  48  years. 

"^  Nearer  my  Father's  House, 
W'^here  the  many  mansions  be  ; 
Nearer  the  Great  AVhite  Throne, 
Nearer  the  Jasper  Sea. 


•  Nearer  the  bound  of  life 
Where  we  lay  our  burdens  down ; 
Nearer  leaving  the  Cross, 
Nearer  gaining  the  Crown. 

'  Feel  thee  near  me  when  my  feet 
Are  slipping  over  the  brink  ; 
For  it  may  be  I  'm  nearer  home. 
Nearer  now  than  I  think.'  ^ 

In  December  1912  a  London  newspaper  con- 
tained an  account  of  a  gypsy  meeting  at  which  Jasper 
Petulengro  was  present.  Not  only  was  this  obviously 
impossible,  but  no  relative  of  Ambrose  Smith  is 
apparently  alive  in  England  who  could  by  any  chance 
have  justified  the  imposition. 

I  have  said  that  it  is  probable  that  Borrow  did  not 
meet  Jasper  or  Ambrose  until  later  days  in  Norwich. 
I  assume  this  as  possible  because  Borrow  misstates  the 
age  of  his  boy  friend  in  Lavengro.  Ambrose  was 
actually  a  year  younger  than  Borrow,  whereas  when 
George  was  eight  years  of  age  he  represents  Ambrose 
as   'a  lad   of  some  twelve  or  thirteen  years,'  and  he 

*  I  am  indebted  to  an  admirable  article  by  Thomas  \Villiam  Thompson  in 
the  Journal  of  the  Gypsy  Lore  Society,  New  Series,  vol.  iii.,  No.  3,  January 
1910,  for  information  concerning  the  later  life  of  Jasper  Petulengro. 


A  WANDERING  CHILDHOOD  45 

keeps  up  this  illusion  on  more  than  one  later  occasion. 
However,  we  may  take  it  as  almost  certain  that 
Borrow  received  his  first  impression  of  the  gypsies  in 
these  early  days  at  Norman  Cross. 

C.  Edinbuhgh  and  David  Haggart.  —  Three 
years  separated  the  sojourn  of  the  Borrow  family  at 
Norman  Cross  from  their  sojourn  in  Edinburgh — three 
years  of  continuous  wandering.  The  West  Norfolk 
Militia  were  watching  the  French  prisoners  at  Norman 
Cross  for  fifteen  months.  After  that  we  have  glimpses 
of  them  at  Colchester,  at  East  Dereham  again,  at 
Harwich,  at  Leicester,  at  Huddersfield,  concerning 
which  place  Borrow  incidentally  in  Wild  Wales  writes 
of  having  been  at  school,  in  Sheffield,  in  Berwick-on- 
Tweed,  and  finally  the  family  are  in  Edinburgh,  where 
they  arrive  on  6th  April  1813.  We  have  already 
referred  to  Borrow's  presence  at  the  High  School  of 
Edinburgh,  the  school  sanctified  by  association  with 
Walter  Scott  and  so  many  of  his  illustrious  fellow- 
countrymen.  He  and  his  brother  were  at  the  High 
School  for  a  single  session,  that  is,  for  the  winter 
session  of  1813-14,  although  with  the  licence  of  a 
maker  of  fiction  he  claimed,  in  Lavengro,  to  have  been 
there  for  two  years.  But  it  is  not  in  this  brief  period 
of  schooling  of  a  boy  of  ten  that  we  find  the  strongest 
influence  that  Edinburgh  gave  to  Borrow.  Rather 
may  we  seek  it  in  the  acquaintanceship  with  the  once 
too  notorious  David  Haggart.  Seven  years  later  than 
this  all  the  peoples  of  the  three  kingdoms  were  discuss- 
ing David  Haggart,  the  Scots  Jack  Sheppard,  the 
clever  young  prison-breaker,  who  was  hanged  at  Edin- 
burgh in  1821  for  killing  his  jailer  in  Dumfries  prison. 
How  much  David  Haggart  filled  the  imagination  of 
every  one  who  could  read  in  the  early  years   of  last 


46     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

century  is  demonstrated  by  a  reference  to  the  Library 
Catalogue  of  the  British  Museum,  where  we  find 
pamphlet  after  pamphlet,  broadsheet  after  broadsheet, 
treating  of  the  adventures,  trial,  and  execution  of  this 
youthful  jailbird.  Even  George  Combe,  the  phreno- 
logist, most  famous  in  his  day,  sat  in  judgment  upon 
the  young  man  while  he  was  in  prison,  and  published  a 
pamphlet  which  made  a  great  impression  upon  prison 
reformers.  Combe  submitted  his  observations  to 
Haggart  in  jail,  and  told  the  prisoner  indeed  that  he 
had  a  greater  development  of  the  organs  of  benevolence 
and  justice  than  he  had  anticipated.  There  cannot 
be  a  doubt  but  that  Combe  started  in  a  measure, 
through  his  treatment  of  this  case,  the  theory  that 
many  of  our  methods  of  punishment  led  to  the  making 
of  habitual  criminals.^  But  by  far  the  most  valuable 
publication  with  regard  to  Haggart  is  one  that  Borrow 
must  have  read  in  his  youth.  This  was  a  life  of 
Haggart  written  by  himself,"  a  little  book  that  had  a 

*  Phrenological  Observations  on  the  Cerebral  Development  of  David  Haggart, 
who  was  lately  executed  at  Edinburgh  for  murder,  and  whose  life  has  since  been 
published.     By  George  Combe,  Esq.     Edinburgh  :  W.  and  C.  Tait,  1821. 

^  The  Life  of  David  Haggart,  alias  John  Wilson,  alias  John  Morison,  alius 
Barney  M'Cone,  alias  John  M'Colgan,  alias  Daniel  O'Brien,  alias  The  Switcher, 
written  by  himself  while  under  sentence  of  death.  Edinburgh  :  Printed  for 
W.  and  C.  Tait  by  James  Ballantyne  and  Co.,  1821. 

In  the  British  Museum  Library  there  is  a  copy  with  an  autograph  note  by 
Lord  Cockburn  on  the  fly-leaf,  which  runs  as  follows : 

'This  youngster  was  my  client  when  he  was  tried  and  convicted.  He  was 
a  great  villain.  His  life  is  almost  all  lies,  and  its  chief  curiosity  consists  in 
the  strange  spirit  of  lying,  the  indulgence  of  which  formed  his  chief  pleasure 
to  the  very  last.  The  manuscript  poem  and  picture  of  himself  (bound  up  at 
the  end  of  the  Life)  were  truly  composed  and  written  by  him.  Being  an 
enormous  miscreant  the  phrenologists  got  hold  of  him,  and  made  the  notorious 
facts  of  his  character  into  evidence  of  the  truth  of  their  system.  He  affected 
some  decent  poetry  just  before  he  was  hanged,  and  therefoi-e  the  Saints  took 
up  his  memory  and  wrote  monodies  on  him.  His  piety  and  the  composition 
of  the  lies  in  this  book  broke  out  at  the  same  time.  H.  C 


A  WANDERING  CHILDHOOD  47 

wide  circulation,  and  containing  a  preface  by  George 
Robertson,  Writer  to  the  Signet,  dated  Edinburgh, 
20th  July  1821.  Mr.  Robertson  tells  us  that  a  portion 
of  the  story  was  written  by  Haggart,  and  the  remainder 
taken  down  from  his  dictation.  The  profits  of  this 
book,  Haggart  arranged,  were  to  go  in  part  to  the 
school  of  the  jail  in  which  he  was  confined,  and  part 
to  be  devoted  to  the  welfare  of  his  younger  brothers 
and  sister.  From  this  little  biography  we  learn  that 
Haggart  was  born  in  Golden  Acre,  near  Canon-Mills, 
in  the  county  of  Edinburgh  in  1801,  his  father,  John 
Haggart,  being  a  gamekeeper,  and  in  later  years  a  dog- 
trainer.  The  boy  was  at  school  under  Mr.  Robin 
Gibson  at  Canon-Mills  for  two  years.  He  left  school 
at  ten  years  of  age,  and  from  that  time  until  his  execu- 
tion seems  to  have  had  a  continuous  career  of  thieving. 
He  tells  us  that  before  he  was  eleven  years  old  he  had 
stolen  a  bantam  cock  from  a  woman  belonging  to  the 
New  Town  of  Edinburgh.  He  went  with  another  boy 
to  Currie,  six  miles  from  Edinburgh,  and  there  stole  a 
pony,  but  this  was  afterwards  returned.  When  but 
twelve  years  of  age  he  attended  Leith  races,  and  it  was 
here  that  he  enlisted  in  the  Norfolk  Militia,  then 
stationed  in  Edinburgh  Castle.  This  may  very  well 
have  brought  him  into  contact  with  Borrow  in  the 
way  described  in  Lavengro.  He  was  only,  however, 
in  the  regiment  for  a  year,  for  when  it  was  sent  back 
to  England  the  Colonel  in  command  of  it  obtained 
young  Haggart's  discharge.  These  dates  coincide 
with  Borrow's  presence  in  Edinburgh.  Haggart's 
history  for  the  next  five  or  six  years  was  in  truth 
merely  that  of  a  wandering  pickpocket,  sometimes  in 
Scotland,  sometimes  in  England,  and  finally  he  became 
a  notorious  burglar.     Incidentally  he  refers  to  a  girl 


48     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

with  whom  he  was  in  love.  Her  name  was  Mary  Hill. 
She  belonged  to  Ecclefechan,  which  Haggart  more 
than  once  visited.  He  must  therefore  have  known 
Carlyle,  who  had  not  then  left  his  native  village.  In 
1820  we  find  him  in  Edinburgh,  carrying  on  the  same 
sort  of  depredations  both  there  and  at  Leith — now  he 
steals  a  silk  plaid,  now  a  greatcoat,  and  now  a  silver 
teapot.  These  thefts,  of  course,  landed  him  in  jail,  out 
of  which  he  breaks  rather  dramatically,  fleeing  with  a 
companion  to  Kelso.  He  had,  indeed,  more  than  one 
experience  of  jail.  Finally,  we  find  him  in  the  prison 
of  Dumfries  destined  to  stand  his  trial  for  '  one  act  of 
house-breaking,  eleven  cases  of  theft,  and  one  of  prison- 
breaking.'  While  in  prison  at  Dumfries  he  planned 
another  escape,  and  in  the  attempt  to  hit  a  jailer 
named  Morrin  on  the  head  with  a  stone  he  unexpectedly 
killed  him.  His  escape  from  Dumfries  jail  after  this 
murder,  and  his  later  wanderings,  are  the  most  dramatic 
part  of  his  book.  He  fled  through  Carlisle  to  New- 
castle, and  then  thought  that  he  would  be  safer  if  he 
returned  to  Scotland,  where  he  found  the  rewards  that 
were  offered  for  his  arrest  faced  him  wherever  he  went. 
He  turned  up  again  in  Edinburgh,  where  he  seems  to 
have  gone  about  freely,  although  reading  everywhere 
the  notices  that  a  reward  of  seventy  guineas  was  offered 
for  his  apprehension.  Then  he  fled  to  Ireland,  where  he 
thought  that  his  safety  was  assured.  At  Dromore  he 
was  arrested  and  brought  before  the  magistrate,  but  he 
spoke  with  an  Irish  brogue,  and  declared  that  his  name 
was  John  M'Colgan,  and  that  he  came  from  Armagh. 
He  escaped  from  Dromore  jail  by  jumping  through  a 
window,  and  actually  went  so  far  as  to  pay  three  pound 
ten  shillings  for  his  passage  to  America,  but  he  was 
afraid  of  the  sea,  and  changed  his  mind,  and  lost  his 


A  WANDERING  CHILDHOOD  49 

passage  money  at  the  last  moment.  After  this  he 
made  a  tour  right  through  Ireland,  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  the  Dublin  Hue  and  Cry  had  a  description  of  his 
person  which  he  read  more  than  once.  His  assurance 
was  such  that  in  TuUamore  he  made  a  pig-driver 
apologise  before  the  magistrate  for  charging  him  with 
theft,  although  he  had  been  living  on  nothing  else  all 
the  time  he  was  in  Ireland.  Finally,  he  was  captured, 
being  recognised  by  a  policeman  from  Edinburgh. 
He  was  brought  from  Ireland  to  Dumfries,  landed 
in  Calton  jail,  Edinburgh,  and  was  tried  and  executed. 
In  addition  to  composing  this  biography  Haggart  wrote 
while  in  Edinburgh  jail  a  rather  long  set  of  verses,  of 
which  I  give  the  following  two  as  specimens  (the 
original  autograph  is  in  Lord  Cockburn's  copy  in  the 
British  Museum) : 

Able  and  willing,  you  all  will  find 
Though  bound  in  chains,  still  free  in  mind, 
For  with  these  things  I  '11  ne  'er  be  grieved 
Although  of  freedom  I  'm  bereaved. 

Now  for  the  crime  that  I  'm  condemn'd. 

The  same  I  never  did  intend. 

Only  my  liberty  to  take, 

As  I  thought  my  life  did  lie  at  stake. 

D.  Ireland  and  Murtagh. — We  may  pass  over 
the  brief  sojourn  in  Norwich  that  was  Borrow's  lot  in 
1814,  when  the  West  Norfolk  JMilitia  left  Scotland. 
When  Napoleon  escaped  from  Elba  the  West  Norfolk 
Regiment  was  despatched  to  Ireland,  and  Captain 
Borrow  again  took  his  family  with  him.  We  find  the 
boy  with  his  family  at  Clonmel  from  May  to  December 
of  1815.  Here  Borrow's  elder  brother,  now  a  boy  of 
fifteen,  was  promoted  from  Ensign  to  Lieutenant,  gain- 
ing in  a  year,  as  Dr.  Knapp  reminds  us,  a  position  that  it 


50     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

had  taken  his  father  twelve  years  to  attain.  In  January 
1816  the  Borrows  moved  to  Templemore,  returning 
to  England  in  May  of  that  year.  Borrow,  we  see,  was 
less  than  a  year  in  Ireland,  and  he  was  only  thirteen 
years  of  age  when  he  left  the  country.  But  it  seems 
to  have  been  the  greatest  influence  that  guided  his 
career.  Three  of  the  most  fascinating  chapters  in 
Lavengro  were  one  outcome  of  that  brief  sojourn,  a 
thirst  for  the  acquirement  of  languages  was  another, 
and  perhaps  a  taste  for  romancing  a  third.  Borrow 
never  came  to  have  the  least  sympathy  with  the  Irish 
race,  or  its  national  aspirations.  As  the  son  of  a  half- 
educated  soldier  he  did  not  come  in  contact  with  any 
but  the  vagabond  element  of  Ireland,  exactly  as  his 
father  had  done  before  him.^  Captain  Borrow  was 
asked  on  one  occasion  what  language  is  being 
spoken : 

'  Irish,'  said  my  father  with  a  loud  voice,  '  and  a  bad  language 
it  is.  .  .  .  There  's  one  part  of  London  where  all  the  Irish  live — 
at  least  the  worst  of  them — and  there  they  hatch  their  villainies 
to  speak  this  tongue.'' 

And  Borrow  followed  his  fatlier's  prejudices  throughout 
his  life,  although  in  the  one  happy  year  in  which  he 
wrote  The  Bible  in  Spain  he  was  able  to  do  justice  to 
the  country  that  had  inspired  so  much  of  his  work  : 

Honour  to  Ireland  and  her  '  hundred  thousand  welcomes ' ! 
Her  fields  have  long  been  the  greenest  in  the  world  ;  her  daughters 
the  fairest;  her  sons  the  bravest  and  most  eloquent.  May  they 
never  cease  to  be  so.^ 

In  later  years  Orangemen  were  to  him  the  only  attrac- 
tive element  in  the  life  of  Ireland,  and  we  may  be  sure 

^  Although   Captain    Borrow  was   never   as   ignorant   as   one  or  two  of 
Sorrow's  biographers,  who  call  the  Irish  language  'Erse.' 
^  The.  Bible  in  Spain,  ch.  xx. 


A  WANDERING  CHILDHOOD  51 

that  he  was  not  displeased  when  his  stepdaughter 
married  one  of  them.  Yet  the  creator  of  Hterature 
works  more  wisely  than  he  knows,  and  Borrows  books 
have  won  the  wise  and  benign  appreciation  of  many  an 
Irish  and  Roman  Catholic  reader,  whose  nationality 
and  religion  Borrow  would  have  anathematised.  Irish- 
men may  forgive  Borrow  much,  because  he  was  one 
of  the  first  of  modern  English  writers  to  take  their 
language  seriously.^  It  is  true  that  he  had  but  the 
most  superficial  knowledge  of  it.  He  admits  —  in 
JFild  Wales — that  he  only  knew  it  'by  ear.'  The 
abundant  Irish  literature  that  has  been  so  dihgently 
studied  during  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  was  a 
closed  book  to  Borrow,  whose  few  translations  from  the 
Irish  have  but  little  value.  Yet  the  very  appreciation 
of  Irish  as  a  language  to  be  seriously  studied  in  days 
before  Dr.  Sigerson,  Dr.  Douglas  Hyde,  and  Dr.  Kuno 
Meyer  had  waxed  enthusiastic  and  practical  kindles 
our  gratitude.  Then  what  a  character  is  IMurtagh. 
We  are  sure  there  was  a  IMurtagh,  although,  unlike 
Borrow's  other  boyish  and  vagabond  friend  Haggart, 
we  know  nothing  about  him  but  what  Borrow  has  to 
tell.  Yet  what  a  picture  is  this  where  IMurtagh  wants 
a  pack  of  cards : 

'  I  say,  Murtagh  ! ' 
'  Yes,  Shorsha  dear  ! ' 


^  Dr.  Jolmson  was  the  first  as  Borrow  was  the  second  to  earn  this  dis- 
tinction.    Johnson,  as  reported  by  Boswell,  says : 

'  /  have  long  wished  that  the  Irish  literature  were  cultivated.  Ireland  is 
known  by  tradition  to  have  been  once  the  seat  of  piety  and  learning,  and  surely 
it  would  he  very  acceptable  to  all  those  who  are  curious  on  the  origin  of  nations  or 
the  affinities  of  languages  to  be  further  informed  of  the  evolution  of  a  people  so 
ancient  and  once  so  illustrious.  I  hope  that  you  will  continue  to  cultivate  this 
kind  of  learning  which  has  too  long  been  neglected,  and  which,  if  it  be  suffered  to 
remain  in  oblivion  for  another  century,  may  perhaps  never  be  retrieved.' 


52     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

'  I  have  a  pack  of  cards.' 

'  You  don't  say  so,  Shorsha  ma  vourneen  ? — you  don't  say  that 
you  have  cards  fifty-two?' 

'  I  do,  though ;  and  they  are  quite  new — never  been  once 
used.' 

'  And  you  '11  be  lending  them  to  me,  I  warrant  ? ' 

'  Don't  think  it ! — But  I  '11  sell  them  to  you,  joy,  if  you  like.' 

'  Hanam  mon  Dioul !  am  I  not  after  telling  you  that  I  have 
no  money  at  all  ? ' 

'  But  you  have  as  good  as  money,  to  me,  at  least ;  and  I  '11 
take  it  in  exchange.' 

'  What 's  that,  Shorsha  dear  ? ' 

'  Irish  ! ' 

'  Irish  ? ' 

'  Yes,  you  speak  Irish ;  I  heard  you  talking  it  the  other  day 
to  the  cripple.     You  shall  teach  me  Irish.' 

'  And  is  it  a  language-master  you  'd  be  making  of  me  ?'' 

'  To  be  sure  ! — what  better  can  you  do  ? — it  would  help  you  to 
pass  your  time  at  school.  You  can't  learn  Greek,  so  you  must 
teach  Irish  ! ' 

Before  Christmas,  Murtagh  was  playing  at  cards  with  his 
brother  Denis,  and  I  could  speak  a  considerable  quantity  of 
broken  Irish. ^ 

With  what  distrust  as  we  learn  again  and  again  in 
Lavengro  did  Captain  Borrow  follow  his  son's  inclina- 
tion towards  languages,  and  especially  the  Irish 
language,  in  his  early  years,  although  seeing  that  he 
was  well  grounded  in  Latin.  Little  did  the  worthy 
Captain  dream  that  this,  and  this  alone,  was  to  carry 
down  his  name  through  the  ages : 

Ah,  that  Irish  !  How  frequently  do  circumstances,  at  first 
sight  the  most  trivial  and  unimportant,  exercise  a  mighty  and 
permanent  influence  on  our  habits  and  pursuits  ! — how  frequently 
is  a  stream  turned  aside  from  its  natural  course  by  some  little 
rock  or  knoll,  causing  it  to  make  an  abrupt  turn  !     On  a   wild 

^  Lavengro. 


A  AVANDEllING  CHILDHOOD  53 

road  in  Ireland  I  had  heard  Irisli  spoken  for  the  first  time ;  and  I 
was  seized  with  a  desire  to  learn  Irish,  the  acquisition  of  which,  in 
my  case,  became  the  stepping-stone  to  other  languages.  I  had 
previously  learnt  Latin,  or  rather  Lilly  ;  but  neither  Latin  nor 
Lilly  made  me  a  philologist. 

Borrow  was  never  a  philologist,  but  this  first  inclination 
was  to  lead  him  to  Spanish,  to  Welsh,  and  above  all 
to  Romany,  and  to  make  of  him  the  most  beloved 
traveller  and  the  strangest  vagabond  in  all  English 
literature. 


CHAPTER  V 

GEORGE  BORROWS  NORWICH— THE  GURNEYS 

Norwich  may  claim  to  be  one  of  the  most  fascinating 
cities  in  the  kingdom.  To-day  it  is  known  to  the 
wide  world  by  its  canaries  and  its  mustard,  although 
its  most  important  industry  is  the  boot  trade,  in  which 
it  employs  some  eight  thousand  persons.  To  the 
visitor  it  has  many  attractions.  The  lovely  cathedral 
with  its  fine  Norman  arches,  the  Erpingham  Gate  so 
splendidly  Gothic,  the  noble  Castle  Keep  so  imposingly 
placed  with  the  cattle-market  below — these  are  all  as 
Borrow  saw  them  nearly  a  century  ago.  So  also  is  the 
church  of  St.  Peter  Mancroft,  where  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  lies  buried.  And  to  the  picturesque  JNIouse- 
hold  Heath  you  may  still  climb  and  recall  one  of  the 
first  struggles  for  liberty  and  progress  that  past  ages 
have  seen,  the  Norfolk  rising  under  Robert  Kett  which 
has  only  not  been  glorified  in  song  and  in  picture, 
because — 

Treason  cloth  never  pi'osper — what's  the  reason? 
Why  if  it  prosper  none  dare  call  it  treason. 

And  Kett's  so-called  rebellion  was  destined  to  failure, 
and  its  leader  to  cruel  martyrdom.  IMousehold  Heath 
has  been  made  the  subject  of  paintings  by  Turner  and 
Crome,  and  of  fine  word  pictures  by  George  Borrow. 
When  Borrow  and  his  parents  lighted  upon  Norwich 

64 


BORROWS  NORWICH— THE  GURNEYS    55 

in  1814  and  18 IG  the  city  had  inspiring  literary  associa- 
tions. Before  the  invention  of  railways  it  seemed  not 
uncommon  for  a  fine  intellectual  life  to  emanate  from 
this  or  that  cathedral  city.  Such  an  intellectual  life 
was  associated  with  Lichfield  when  the  Darwins  and 
the  Edgeworths  gathered  at  the  Bishop's  Palace  around 
Dr.  Seward  and  his  accomplished  daughters.  Norwich 
has  more  than  once  been  such  a  centre.  The  first 
occasion  was  in  the  period  of  which  we  write,  when  the 
Taylors  and  the  Gurneys  flourished  in  a  region  of 
ideas ;  the  second  was  during  the  years  from  1837  to 
1849,  when  Edward  Stanley  held  the  bishopric.  This 
later  period  does  not  come  into  our  story,  as  by  that 
time  Borrow  had  all  but  left  Norwich.  But  of  the 
earlier  period,  the  period  of  Borrow's  more  or  less  fitful 
residence  in  Norwich — 1814  to  1833 — we  are  tempted 
to  write  at  some  length.  There  were  three  separate 
literary  and  social  forces  in  Norwich  in  the  first 
decades  of  the  nineteenth  century — the  Gurneys  of 
Earlham,  the  Taylor- Austin  group,  and  William 
Taylor,  who  was  in  no  way  related  to  Mrs.  John  Taylor 
and  her  daughter,  Sarah  Austin.  The  Gurneys  were 
truly  a  remarkable  family,  destined  to  leave  their 
impress  upon  Norwich  and  upon  a  wider  world.  At 
the  time  of  his  marriage  in  1773  to  Catherine  Bell, 
John  Gurney,  wool-stapler  of  Norwich,  took  his  young 
wife,  whose  face  has  been  preserved  in  a  canvas  by 
Gainsborough,  to  live  in  the  old  Court  House  in  Mag- 
dalen Street,  which  had  been  the  home  of  two  genera- 
tions of  the  Gurney  family.  In  1786  John  Gurney 
went  with  his  continually  growing  family  to  live  at 
Earlham  Hall,  some  two  or  three  miles  out  of 
Norwich  on  the  Earlham  Road.  Here  that  family  of 
eleven  children — one  boy  had  died  in  infancy — grew 


56     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

up.  Not  one  but  has  an  interesting  history,  which  is 
recorded  by  Mr.  Augustus  Hare  and  other  writers.^ 
Elizabeth,  the  fourth  daughter,  married  Joseph  Fry, 
and  as  Elizabeth  Fry  attained  to  a  world-wide  fame 
as  a  prison  reformer.  Hannah  married  Sir  Thomas 
Fowell  Buxton  of  Slave  Trade  Abolition ;  Richenda, 
the  Rev.  Francis  Cunningham,  who  sent  George  Borrow 
upon  his  career ;  while  Louisa  married  Samuel  Hoare 
of  Hampstead.  Of  her  Joseph  John  Gurney  said  at 
her  death  in  1836  that  she  was  *  superior  in  point  of 
talent  to  any  other  of  my  father's  eleven  children.'  It 
is  with  the  eleventh  child,  however,  that  we  have  mainly 
to  do,  for  this  son,  Joseph  John  Gurney,  alone  appears 
in  Borrow's  pages.  The  picture  of  these  eleven  Quaker 
children  growing  up  to  their  various  destinies  under  the 
roof  of  Earlham  Hall  is  an  attractive  one.  Men  and 
women  of  all  creeds  accepted  the  cathoUc  Quaker's 
hospitality.  Mrs.  Opie  and  a  long  list  of  worthies  of 
the  past  come  before  us,  and  when  Mr.  Gurney,  in 
1802,  took  his  six  unmarried  daughters  to  the  Lakes 
Old  Crome  accompanied  them  as  drawing-master. 
There  is,  however,  one  picture  in  the  story  of  unforget- 
table charm,  the  episode  of  the  courtship  of  Elizabeth 
Gurney  by  Joseph  Fry,  and  this  I  must  quote  from 
Mr.  Augustus  Hare's  pleasant  book : 

Mr.  Fry  had  no  intention  of  exposing  himself  to  the  possibility 
of  a  refusal.  He  bought  a  very  handsome  gold  watch  and  chain, 
and  laid  it  down  upon  a  white  seat — the  white  seat  which  still 
exists — in  the  garden  at  Earlham.  '  If  Betsy  takes  up  that  watch,' 
he  said,  '  it  is  a  sign  that  she  accepts  me :  if  she  does  not  take  it 
up  by  a  particular  hour,  it  will  show  that  I  must  leave  Earlham.' 


*  See  The  Gwneys  of  Earlham  by  Augustus  J,  C.  Hare,  2  vols.,  1895 

Memoirs  of  Joseph  Gurney ;  with  Selections  from  his  Journal  and  Correspond- 
ence, edited  by  Joseph  Bevan  Braithwaite,  2  vols.,  1834. 


BORROWS  NORWICH— THE  GURNEYS    57 

The  six  sisters  concealed  themselves  in  six  laurel-bushes  in  different 
parts  of  the  grounds  to  watch.  One  can  imagine  their  intense 
curiosity  and  anxiety.  At  last  the  tall,  graceful  Betsy,  her  flaxen 
hair  now  hidden  under  a  Quaker  cap,  shyly  emerged  upon  the 
gravel  walk.  She  seemed  scarcely  conscious  of  her  surroundings, 
as  if,  '  on  the  wings  of  prayer,  she  was  being  wafted  into  the 
unseen.'  But  she  reached  the  garden  seat,  and  there,  in  the  sun- 
shine, lay  the  glittering  new  watch.  The  sight  of  it  recalled  her 
to  earth.  She  could  not,  could  not,  take  it,  and  fled  swiftly  back 
to  the  house.  But  the  six  sisters  remained  in  their  laurel-bushes. 
They  felt  sure  she  would  revoke,  and  they  did  not  watch  in  vain. 
An  hour  elapsed,  in  which  her  father  urged  her,  and  in  which  con- 
science seemed  to  drag^  her  forwards.  Once  again  did  the  anxious 
sisters  see  Betsy  emerge  from  the  house,  with  nfore  faltering  steps 
this  time,  but  still  inwardly  praying,  and  slowly,  tremblingly,  they 
saw  her  take  up  the  watch,  and  the  deed  was  done.  She  never 
afterwards  regretted  it,  though  it  was  a  bitter  pang  to  her  when 
she  collected  her  eighty-six  children  in  the  garden  at  Earlham 
and  bade  them  farewell,  and  though  she  wrote  in  her  journal  as  a 
bride,  '  I  cried  heartily  on  leaving  Norwich ;  the  very  stones  in 
the  street  were  dear  to  me.' 

In  1803 — the  year  of  Borrow's  birth — John  Giirney 
became  a  partner  in  the  great  London  Bank  of  Overend 
and  Gurney,  and  his  son,  Joseph  John,  in  that  same 
year  went  up  to  Oxford.  In  1809  Joseph  returned  to 
take  his  place  in  the  bank,  and  to  preside  over  the 
family  of  unmarried  sisters  at  Earlham,  father  and 
mother  being  dead,  and  many  members  of  the  family 
distributed.  Incidentally,  we  are  told  by  Mr.  Hare 
that  the  Gurneys  of  Earlham  at  this  time  drove  out 
with  four  black  horses,  and  that  when  Bishop  Bathurst, 
Stanley's  predecessor,  required  horses  for  State  occasions 
to  drive  him  to  the  cathedral,  he  borrowed  these,  and 
the  more  modest  episcopal  horses  took  the  Quaker 
family  to  their  meeting-house.  It  does  not  come 
within  the  scope  of  this  book,  discursive  as  I  choose  to 


58     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

make  it,  to  trace  the  fortunes  of  these  eleven  remark- 
able Gurney  children,  or  even  of  Borrow's  momentary- 
acquaintance,  Joseph  John  Gurney.  His  residence  at 
Earlham,  and  his  life  of  philanthropy,  are  a  romance  in 
a  way,  although  one  wonders  whether  if  the  name  of 
Gurney  had  not  been  associated  with  so  much  of  virtue 
and  goodness  the  crash  that  came  long  after  Joseph 
John  Gurney 's  death  would  have  been  quite  so  full  of 
affliction  for  a  vast  multitude.  Joseph  John  Gurney 
died  in  1847,  in  his  fifty-ninth  year ;  his  sister,  Mrs. 
Fry,  had  died  two  years  earlier.  The  younger  brother 
and  twelfth  child — Joseph  John  being  the  eleventh — 
Daniel  Gurney,  the  last  of  the  twelve  children,  lived 
till  1880,  aged  eighty-nine.  He  had  outlived  by  many 
years  the  catastrophe  to  the  great  banking  firm  with 
which  the  name  of  Gurney  is  associated.  This  great  firm 
of  Overend  and  Gurney,  of  which  yet  another  brother, 
Samuel,  was  the  moving  spirit,  was  organised  nine  years 
after  his  deatli — in  1865 — into  a  joint-stock  company, 
which  failed  to  the  amount  of  eleven  millions  in  1866. 
At  the  time  of  the  failure,  which  affected  all  England, 
much  as  did  the  Liberator  smash  a  generation  later, 
the  only  Gurney  in  the  directorate  was  Daniel  Gurney, 
to  whom  his  sister.  Lady  Buxton,  allowed  a  pension 
of  £2000  a  year.  This  is  a  long  story  to  tell  by  way  of 
introduction  to  one  episode  in  I^avengro.  Dr.  Knapp 
places  this  episode  in  the  year  1817,  when  Borrow  was 
but  fourteen  years  of  age  and  Gurney  was  twenty-nine. 
I  need  not  apologise  at  this  point  for  a  very  lengthy 
quotation  from  a  familiar  book  : 

At  some  distance  from  the  city,  behind  a  range  of  hilly  ground 
which  rises  towards  the  south-west,  is  a  small  river,  the  waters  of 
which,  after  many  meanderings,  eventually  enter  the  principal 
river  of  the  district,  and  assist  to  swell  the  tide  which  it  rolls  down 


BORROWS  NORWICH— THE  GURNEYS    59 

to  the  ocean.     It  is  a  sweet  rivulet,  and  pleasant  it  is  to  trace  its 
course  from   its   spring-head,  high  up  in  the  remote   regions  of 
Eastern  Anglia,  till  it  arrives  in  the  valley  behind   yon  rising 
ground ;  and  pleasant  is  that  valley,  truly  a  good  spot,  but  most 
lovely  where  yonder  bridge  crosses  the  little  stream.     Beneath  its 
arch  the  waters  rush  garrulously  into  a  blue  pool,  and  are  there 
stilled  for  a  time,  for  the  pool  is  deep,  and  they  appear  to  have 
sunk  to  sleep.     Farther  on,  however,  you  hear  their  voice  again, 
where  they  ripple  gaily  over  yon  gravelly  shallow.     On  the  left 
the  hill  slopes  gently  down  to  the  margin  of  the  stream.     On  the 
rio-ht  is  a  green  level,  a  smiling  meadow,  grass  of  the  richest  decks 
the  side  of  the  slope ;  mighty  trees  also  adorn  it,  giant  elms,  the 
nearest  of  which,  when  the  sun  is  nigh  its  meridian,  fling  a  broad 
shadow  upon  the  face  of  the  pool ;  through  yon  vista  you  catch  a 
glimpse  of  the  ancient  brick  of  an  old  English  hall.     It  has  a 
stately  look,  that  old  building,  indistinctly  seen,  as  it  is,  among 
those  umbrageous  trees ;   you  might  almost  suppose  it  an  earPs 
home ;  and  such  it  was,  or  rather  upon  its  site  stood  an   earl's 
home,  in  days  of  old,  for  there  some  old  Kemp,  some  Sigurd,  or 
Thorkild,  roaming  in  quest  of  a  hearthstead,  settled  down  in  the 
grey  old  time,  when  Thor  and  Freya  were  yet  gods,  and  Odin  was 
a  portentous  name.     Yon  old  hall  is  still  called  the  EarPs  Home, 
though  the  hearth  of  Sigurd  is  now  no  more,  and  the  bones  of  the 
old  Kemp,  and  of  Sigrith  his  dame,  have  been  mouldering  for  a 
thousand  years    in    some    neighbouring    knoll ;    perhaps    yonder, 
where  those  tall  Norwegian  pines  shoot  up  so  boldly  into  the  air. 
It  is  said  that  the  old  earPs  galley  was  once  moored  where  is  now 
that  blue  pool,  for  the  waters  of  that  valley  were  not  always  sweet ; 
yon  valley  was  once  an  arm  of  the  sea,  a  salt  lagoon,  to  which  the 
war-barks  of '  Sigurd,  in  search  of  a  home,'  found  their  way. 

I  was  in  the  habit  of  spending  many  an  hour  on  the  banks  of 
that  rivulet  with  my  rod  in  my  hand,  and,  when  tired  with 
angling,  would  stretch  myself  on  the  grass,  and  gaze  upon  the 
waters  as  they  glided  past,  and  not  unfrequently,  divesting  myself 
of  my  dress,  I  would  plunge  into  the  deep  pool  which  I  have 
already  mentioned,  for  I  had  long  since  learned  to  swim.  And  it 
came  to  pass,  that  on  one  hot  summer's  day,  after  bathing  in  the 
pool,  I  passed  along  the  meadow  till  I  came  to  a  shallow  part,  and, 
wading  over  to  the  opposite  side,  I  adjusted  my  dress,  and  com- 


60     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

menced  fishing  in  another  pool,  beside  which  was  a  small  clump  of 
hazels. 

And  there  I  sat  upon  the  bank,  at  the  bottom  of  the  hill 
which  slopes  down  from  '  the  EarFs  Home ' ;  my  float  was  on  the 
waters,  and  my  back  was  towards  the  old  hall.  I  drew  up  many 
fish,  small  and  great,  which  I  took  from  off  the  hook  mechanically, 
and  flung  upon  the  bank,  for  I  was  almost  unconscious  of  what  I 
was  about,  for  my  mind  was  not  with  my  fish.  I  was  thinking  of 
my  earlier  years — of  the  Scottish  crags  and  the  heaths  of  Ireland 
— and  sometimes  my  mind  would  dwell  on  my  studies — on  the 
sonorous  stanzas  of  Dante,  rising  and  falling  like  the  waves  of  the 
sea — or  would  strive  to  remember  a  couplet  or  two  of  poor 
Monsieur  Boileau. 

'  Canst  thou  answer  to  thy  conscience  for  pulling  all  those  fish 
out  of  the  water  and  leaving  them  to  gasp  in  the  sun  ? '  said  a 
voice,  clear  and  sonorous  as  a  bell. 

I  started,  and  looked  round.  Close  beliind  me  stood  the  tall 
figure  of  a  man,  dressed  in  raiment  of  quaint  and  singular  fashion, 
but  of  goodly  materials.  He  was  in  the  prime  and  vigour  of 
manhood ;  his  features  handsome  and  noble,  but  full  of  calmness 
and  benevolence ;  at  least  I  thought  so,  though  they  were  some- 
what shaded  by  a  hat  of  finest  beaver,  with  broad  drooping 
eaves. 

'  Surely  that  is  a  very  cruel  diversion  in  which  thou  indulgest, 
my  young  friend?'  he  continued. 

'  I  am  sorry  for  it,  if  it  be,  sir,'  said  I,  rising ;  '  but  I  do  not 
think  it  cruel  to  fish.' 

'  What  are  thy  reasons  for  thinking  so  ?'  » 

'  Fishing  is  mentioned  frequently  in  Scripture.  Simon  Peter 
was  a  fisherman.' 

'True;  and  Andrew  his  brother.  But  thou  forgettest;  they 
did  not  follow  fishing  as  a  diversion,  as  I  fear  thou  doest. — Thou 
readest  the  Scriptures .'' ' 

'  Sometimes.' 

'  Sometimes  ? — not  daily  ? — that  is  to  be  regretted.  What 
profession  dost  thou  make  ? — I  mean  to  what  religious  denomina- 
tion dost  thou  belong,  my  young  friend .?' 

'  Church.' 

'  It  is  a  very  good  profession — there  is  much  of  Scripture 


BORROWS  NORWICH— THE  GURNEYS    61 

contained    in   its    liturgy.      Dost   thou   read   aught   beside  the 
Scriptures  ?  "* 

'  Sometimes."' 

'  What  dost  thou  read  besides  ? ' 

'  Greek,  and  Dante.' 

*  Indeed !  then  thou  hast  the  advantage  over  myself;  I  can 
only  read  the  former.  Well,  I  am  rejoiced  to  find  that  thou  hast 
other  pursuits  beside  thy  fisliing.     Dost  thou  know  Hebrew  ? ' 

'  No.' 

'  Thou  shouldest  study  it.  Why  dost  thou  not  undertake  the 
study  ? ' 

'  I  have  no  books.' 

'  I  will  lend  thee  books,  if  thou  wish  to  undertake  the  study. 
I  live  yonder  at  the  hall,  as  perhaps  thou  knowest.  I  have  a 
library  there,  in  which  are  many  curious  books,  both  in  Greek  and 
Hebrew,  whicli  I  will  show  to  thee,  whenever  thou  mayest  find 
it  convenient  to  come  and  see  me.  Farewell !  I  am  glad  to  find 
that  thou  hast  pursuits  more  satisfactory  than  thy  cruel  fishing.' 

And  the  man  of  peace  departed,  and  left  me  on  the  bank  of 
the  stream.  Whether  from  the  effect  of  his  words  or  from  want 
of  inclination  to  the  sport,  I  know  not,  but  from  that  day  I 
became  less  and  less  a  practitioner  of  that  '  cruel  fishing.'  I  rarely 
flung  line  and  angle  into  the  water,  but  I  not  unfrequently 
wandered  by  the  banks  of  the  pleasant  rivulet.  It  seems  singular 
to  me,  on  reflection,  that  I  never  availed  myself  of  his  kind  invita- 
tion. I  say  singular,  for  the  extraordinary,  under  whatever  form, 
had  long  had  no  slight  interest  for  me  :  and  I  had  discernment 
enough  to  perceive  that  yon  was  no  common  man.  Yet  I  went 
not  near  him,  certainly  not  from  bashfulness,  or  timidity, 
feelings  to  which  I  had  long  been  an  entire  stranger.  Am  I  to 
regret  this  ?  perhaps,  for  I  might  have  learned  both  wisdom  and 
righteousness  from  those  calm,  quiet  lips,  and  my  after-course 
might  have  been  widely  different.  As  it  was,  I  fell  in  with  other 
queer  companions,  from  whom  I  received  widely  different  im- 
pressions than  those  I  might  have  derived  from  him.  When 
many  years  had  rolled  on,  long  after  I  had  attained  manhood,  and 
had  seen  and  suffered  much,  and  when  our  first  interview  had 
long  been  effaced  from  the  mind  of  the  man  of  peace,  I  visited 
him  in  his  venerable  hall,  and  partook  of  the  hospitality  of  his 


62     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

hearth.  And  there  I  saw  his  gentle  partner  and  his  fair  children, 
and  on  the  morrow  he  showed  me  the  books  of  which  he  had 
spoken  years  before  by  the  side  of  the  stream.  In  the  low  quiet 
chamber,  whose  one  window,  shaded  by  a  gigantic  elm,  looks  down 
the  slope  towards  the  pleasant  stream,  he  took  from  the  shelf  his 
learned  books,  Zohar  and  Mishna,  Toldoth  Jesu  and  Abarbenel. 

'  I  am  fond  of  these  studies,'  said  he,  '  which,  perhaps,  is  not  to 
be  wondered  at,  seeing  that  our  people  have  been  compared  to  the 
Jews.  In  one  respect  I  confess  we  are  similar  to  them  :  we  are 
fond  of  getting  money.  I  do  not  like  this  last  author,  this 
Abarbenel,  the  worse  for  having  been  a  money-changer.  I  am  a 
banker  myself,  as  thou  knowest.' 

And  would  there  were  many  like  him,  amidst  the  money- 
changers of  princes  !  The  hall  of  many  an  earl]  lacks  the  bounty, 
the  palace  of  many  a  prelate  the  piety  and  learning,  which  adorn 
the  quiet  Quaker's  home  ! 

It  is  doubtful  if  Borrow  met  Joseph  John  Gurney 
more  than  on  the  one  further  occasion  to  which  he 
refers  above.  At  the  commencement  of  his  engage- 
ment with  the  Bible  Society  he  writes  to  its  secretary, 
Mr.  Jowett  (March  18,  1833),  to  say  that  he  must  pro- 
cure from  Mr.  Cunningham  '  a  letter  of  introduction 
from  him  to  John  Gurney,'  and  this  second  and  last 
interview  must  have  taken  place  at  Earlham  before  his 
departure  for  Russia. 

But  if  Borrow  was  to  come  very  little  under  the 
influence  of  Joseph  John  Gurney,  his  destiny  was  to 
be  considerably  moulded  by  the  action  of  Gurney 's 
brother-in-law,  Cunningham,  who  first  put  him  in 
touch  with  the  Bible  Society.  Joseph  John  Gurney 
and  his  sisters  were  the  very  life  of  the  Bible  Society 
in  those  years. 


CHAPTER  VI 

GEORGE  BORROWS  NORWICH— THE  TAYLORS 

With  the  famous  '  Taylors  of  Norwich  '  Borrow  seems 
to  have  had  no  acquaintance,  although  he  went  to 
school  with  a  connection  of  that  family,  James  Martin- 
eau.  These  socially  important  Taylors  were  in  no  way 
related  to  William  Taylor  of  that  city,  who  knew 
German  literature,  and  scandalised  the  more  virtuous 
citizens  by  that,  and  perhaps  more  by  his  fondness  for 
wine  and  also  for  good  English  beer — a  drink  over 
which  his  friend  Borrow  was  to  become  lyrical.  When 
people  speak  of  the  Norwich  Taylors  they  refer  to  the 
family  of  Dr.  John  Taylor,  who  in  1733  was  elected  to 
the  charge  of  the  Presbyterian  congregation  in  Nor- 
wich. His  eldest  son,  Richard,  married  Margaret,  the 
daughter  of  a  mayor  of  Norwich  of  the  name  of 
Meadows  ;  and  Sarah,  another  daughter  of  that  same 
worshipful  mayor,  married  David  Martineau,  grandson 
of  Gaston  Martineau,  who  fled  from  France  at  the  time 
of  the  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes.  ^  Harriet  and 
James  JNIartineau  were  grandchildren  of  this  David. 
The  second  son  of  Richard  and  jNlargaret  Taylor  was 
John,  who  married  Susannah  Cook.  Susannah  is  the 
clever  Mrs.  John  Taylor  of  this  story,  and  her  daughter 
of  even  greater  ability  was  Sarah  Austin,  the  wife  df  the 

*  Three  Generations  of  Englishwomen,  by  Janet  Ross,  vol,  i.  p.  3. 

63 


64     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

famous  jurist.  Their  daughter  married  Sir  Alexander 
Duff-Gordon.  She  was  the  author  of  Lettei^s  from 
Egypt,  a  book  to  which  George  Meredith  wrote  an  '  In- 
troduction,' so  much  did  he  love  the  writer.  Lady  Duff- 
Gordon's  daughter,  Janet  Ross,  wrote  the  biography  of 
her  mother,  her  grandmother,  and  Mrs.  John  Taylor,  in 
Three  Generations  of  Englishwomen.  A  niece,  Lena 
Duff-Gordon  (Mrs.  Waterfield),  has  written  pleasant 
books  of  travel,  and  so,  for  five  generations,  this  family 
has  produced  clever  women-folk.  But  here  we  are 
only  concerned  with  Mrs.  John  Taylor,  called  by  her 
friends  the  'Madame  Roland  of  Norwich.'  Lucy 
Aikin  describes  how  she  '  darned  her  boy's  grey 
worsted  stockings  while  holding  her  own  with  Southey, 
Brougham,  or  Mackintosh.'  One  of  her  daughters 
married  Henry  Reeve,  and,  as  I  have  said,  another 
married  John  Austin.  Borrow  was  twenty  years  of 
age  and  living  in  Norwich  when  Mrs.  Taylor  died.  It 
is  to  be  regretted  that  in  the  early  impressionable  years 
his  position  as  a  lawyer's  clerk  did  not  allow  of  his 
coming  into  a  circle  in  which  he  might  have  gained 
certain  qualities  of  savoir  faire  vindjoie  de  vivre,  which 
he  was  all  his  days  to  lack.  Of  the  Taylor  family  the 
Duke  of  Sussex  said  that  they  reversed  the  ordinary 
saying  that  it  takes  nine  tailors  to  make  a  man.  The 
witticism  has  been  attributed  to  Sydney  Smith,  but 
Mrs.  Ross  gives  evidence  that  it  was  the  Duke's — the 
youngest  son  of  George  in.  In  his  Life  of  Sir  James 
Mackintosh  Basil  INIontagu,  referring  to  Mrs.  John 
Taylor,  says : 

Norwich  was  ahvays  a  haven  of  rest  to  us,  from  the  literary 
society  with  which  that  city  abounded.  Dr.  Sayers  we  used  to 
visit,  and  the  high-minded  and  inteUigent  William  Taylor ;  but 
our  chief  delight  was  in  the  societv  of  Mrs.  John  Taylor,  a  most 


BORROWS  NORWICH— THE  TAYLORS  65 

intelligent  and  excellent  woman,  mild  and  unassuming,  quiet  and 
meek,  sitting  amidst  her  large  family,  occupied  with  her  needle 
and  domestic  occupations,  but  always  assisting,  by  her  great 
knowledge,  the  advancement  of  kind  and  dignified  sentiment  and 
conduct. 

We  note  here  the  reference  to  '  the  high-minded  and 
intelligent  William  Taylor,'  because  William  Taylor, 
whose  influence  upon  Borrows  destiny  was  so  pro- 
nounced, has  been  revealed  to  many  by  the  slanders  of 
Harriet  Martineau,  that  extraordinary  compound  of 
meanness  and  generosity,  of  poverty-stricken  intelli- 
gence and  rich  endowment.  In  her  Autobiogimphy , 
pubHshed  in  1877,  thirty-four  years  after  Robberds's 
3Iemoir  of  William  Taylor,  she  dwells  upon  the  drink- 
ing propensities  of  William  Taylor,  who  was  a  school- 
fellow of  her  father's.  She  admits,  indeed,  that  Taylor 
was  an  ideal  son,  whose  '  exemplary  filial  duty  was  a 
fine  spectacle  to  the  whole  city,'  and  she  continues : 

His  virtues  as  a  son  were  before  our  eyes  when  we  witnessed 
his  endurance  of  his  father's  brutality  of  temper  and  manners, 
and  his  watchfulness  in  ministering  to  the  old  man's  comfort  in 
his  infirmities.  When  we  saw,  on  a  Sunday  morning,  William 
Taylor  guiding  his  blind  mother  to  chapel  ...  we  could  forgive 
anything  that  had  shocked  or  disgusted  us  at  the  dinner-table. 

Well,  Harriet  Martineau  is  not  much  to  be  trusted  as 
to  Taylor's  virtues  or  his  vices,  for  her  early  recollec- 
tions are  frequently  far  from  the  mark.  Thus  she 
refers  under  the  date  1833  to  the  fact  that : 

The  great  days  of  the  Gurneys  were  not  come  yet.  The 
remarkable  family  from  which  issued  Mrs.  Fry  and  Joseph  John 
Gurney  were  then  a  set  of  dashing  young  people,  dressed  in  gay 
riding  habits  and  scarlet  boots,  and  riding  about  the  country  to 
balls  and  gaieties  of  all  sorts. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  this  year,  1833,  Mrs.  Fry  was 

E 


66     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

the   mother  of  fifteen  children,  and  had  nme  grand- 
children, and  Joseph  John  Gurney  had  been  twice  a 
widower.      Both  brother  and  sister  were  zealous  phil- 
anthropists at  this  date.     And  so  we  may  take  with 
some    measure    of    qualification    Harriet   Martineau's 
many  strictures  upon  Taylor's  drinking  habits,  which 
were,    no    doubt,   those   of    his    century   and   epoch ; 
although  perhaps  beyond   the  acceptable  standard  of 
Norwich,  where  the  Gurneys  were  strong  teetotallers, 
and  the  Bishop  once  invited  Father  Mathew,  then  in 
the  glory  of  his  temperance  crusade,  to  discourse  in  his 
diocese.      Indeed,  Robberds,  his   biographer,   tells   us 
explicitly   that  these   charges   of    intemperance   were 
'  grossly  and  unjustly  exaggerated.'     William  Taylor's 
life  is  pleasantly  interlinked  with  Scott  and  Southey. 
Lucy  Aikin  records  that  she  heard  Sir  Walter  Scott 
declare  to  Mrs.    Barbauld  that  Taylor   had   laid  the 
foundations   of  his   literary   career — had    started   him 
upon   the   path   of  glory  through   romantic   verse   to 
romantic  prose,  from  The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel  to 
Waverley.     It  was  the  reading  of  Taylor's  translation 
of  Burger's  Lenore  that  did  all  this.     '  This,  madam,' 
said  Scott,  '  was  what  made  me  a  poet.     I  had  several 
times   attempted   the   more    regular   kinds   of  poetry 
without  success,  but  here  was  something  that  I  thought 
I    could   do.'     Southey   assuredly   loved   Taylor,   and 
each   threw   at   the   feet   of  the   other   the   abundant 
literary  learning  that  both  possessed.     This  we  find  in  a 
correspondence  which,  reading  more  than    a   century 
after  it  was  written,  still  has  its  charm. ^     The  son  of  a 

1  A  Memoir  of  the  Life  and  Writings  of  Williayn  Taylor  oj  Norwich:  Contain- 
ing his  Correspondence  of  many  years  with  the  late  Robert  Southey,  Esquire,  and 
Original  Letters  from  Sir  Walter  Scott  and  other  Eminent  Literary  Men, 
Compiled  and  edited  by  J.  W.  Robberds  of  Norwich,  2  vols.  Loudon  : 
John  Murray,  1843. 


BORROWS  NORWICH— THE  TAYLORS    C7 

wealthy  manufacturer  of  Norwich,  Taylor  was  born  in 
that  city  in  1765.  He  was  in  early  years  a  pupil  of 
Mrs.  Barbauld.  At  fourteen  he  was  placed  in  his 
father's  counting-house,  and  soon  afterwards  was  sent 
abroad,  in  the  company  of  one  of  the  partners,  to  acquire 
languages.  He  learnt  German  thoroughly  at  a  time 
when  few  Englishmen  had  acquaintance  with  its  litera- 
ture. To  Goethe's  genius  he  never  did  justice,  having 
been  offended  by  that  great  man's  failure  to  acknow- 
ledge a  book  that  Taylor  sent  to  him,  exactly  as  Carlyle 
and  Borrow  alike  were  afterwards  offended  by  similar 
delinquencies  on  the  part  of  Walter  Scott.  When  he 
settled  again  in  Norwich  he  commenced  to  write  for  the 
magazines,  among  others  for  Sir  Richard  Phillips's 
MonthJij  Magazine^  and  to  correspond  with  Southey.  At 
the  time  Southey  was  a  poor  man,  thinking  of  abandon- 
ing literature  for  the  law,  and  hopeful  of  practising  in 
Calcutta.  The  Norwich  Liberals,  however,  aspired  to 
a  newspaper  to  be  called  The  Iris.  Taylor  asked 
Southey  to  come  to  Norwich  and  to  become  its  editor. 
Southey  declined  and  Taylor  took  up  the  task.  The 
Norwich  Iris  lasted  for  two  years.  Southey  never 
threw  over  his  friendship  for  Taylor,  although  their 
views  ultimately  came  to  be  far  apart.  Writing  to 
Taylor  in  1803  he  says  : 

Your  theology  does  nothing  but  mischief;  it  serves  only  to 
thin  the  miserable  ranks  of  Unitarianism.  The  regular  troops  of 
infidelity  do  little  harm  ;  and  their  trumpeters,  such  as  Voltaire 
and  Paine,  not  much  more.  But  it  is  such  pioneers  as  Middleton, 
and  you  and  your  German  friends,  that  work  underground  and 
sap  the  very  citadel.  That  MonthI//  Magazine  is  read  by  all  the 
Dissenters — I  call  it  the  Dissenters'  Obituary — and  here  are  you 
eternally  mining,  mining,  under  the  shallow  faith  of  their  half- 
learned,  half-witted,  half-paid,  half-starved  pastors. 


68     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

But  the  correspondence  went  on  apace,  indeed  it 
occupies  the  larger  part  of  Robherds's  two  substantial 
volumes.  It  is  in  the  very  last  letter  from  Taylor 
to  Southey  that  we  find  an  oft-quoted  reference  to 
Borrow.     The  letter  is  dated  12th  March  1821 : 

A  Norwich  young  man  is  construing  with  me  Schiller's 
Wilhehn  Tell  with  the  view  of  translating  it  for  the  Press.  His 
name  is  George  Henry  Borrow,  and  he  has  learnt  German  with 
extraordinary  rapidity ;  indeed,  he  has  the  gift  of  tongues,  and, 
though  not  yet  eighteen,  understands  twelve  languages — English, 
Welsh,  Erse,  Latin,  Greek,  Hebrew,  German,  Danish,  French, 
Italian,  Spanish,  and  Portuguese ;  he  would  like  to  get  into  the 
Office  for  Foreign  Affairs,  but  does  not  know  how. 

Although  this  was  the  last  letter  to  Southey  that  is 
published  in  the  memoir,  Taylor  visited  Southey  at 
Keswick  in  1826.  Taylor's  three  volumes  of  the 
Histofic  Su?xwy  of  German  Poetry  appeared  in  1828, 
1829,  and  1830.  Sir  Walter  Scott,  in  the  last  year  of 
his  life,  wrote  from  Abbotsford  on  23rd  April  1832 
to  Taylor  to  protest  against  an  allusion  to  '  William 
Scott  of  Edinburgh '  being  the  author  of  a  translation 
of  Goetz  von  Berlicliingen.  Scott  explained  that  he 
(Walter  Scott)  was  that  author,  and  also  made  allusion 
to  the  fact  that  he  had  borrowed  with  acknowledsr- 
ment  two  lines  from  Taylor's  Lenore  for  his  own — 

Tramp^  tramp  along  the  land^ 
Splash,  splash  across  the  sea. 

adding  that  his  recollection  of  the  obligation  was  in- 
finitely stronger  than  of  the  mistake.  It  would  seem, 
however,  that  the  name  '  William  '  was  actually  on  the 
title-page  of  the  London  edition  of  1799  of  Goetz  von 
Bei'lichingen.  When  Southey  heard  of  the  death  of 
Taylor  in  1836  he  wrote : 


BORROWS  NORWICH— THE  TAYLORS    69 

I  was  not  aware  of  my  old  friencrs  illness,  or  I  should  certainly 
have  written  to  him,  to  express  that  unabated  regard  which  I 
have  felt  for  him  eight-and-thirty  years,  and  that  hope  which  I 
shall  ever  feel,  that  we  may  meet  in  the  higher  state  of  existence. 
I  have  known  very  few  who  equalled  him  in  talents — none  who 
had  a  kinder  heart ;  and  there  never  lived  a  more  dutiful  son,  or  a 
sincerer  friend. 

Taylor's  many  books  are  nowall  forgotten.  His  trans- 
lation of  Burger's  Lenorc  one  now  only  recalls  by  its 
effect  upon  Scott;  his  translation  of  Lessing's  Nathan  the 
Wise  has  been  superseded.  His  voluminous  Historic 
Survey  of  German  Poety^y  only  lives  through  Carlyle's 
severe  review  in  the  Kdinburgh  Review  ^  against  the 
many  strictures  in  which  Taylor's  biographer  attempts 
to  defend  him.  Taylor  had  none  of  Carlyle's  inspira- 
tion. Not  a  line  of  his  work  survives  in  print  in  our 
day,  but  it  was  no  small  thing  to  have  been  the  friend 
and  correspondent  of  Southey,  whose  figure  in  literary 
history  looms  larger  now  than  it  did  when  Emerson  asked 
contemptuously,  '  Who  's  Southey  ? ' ;  and  to  have  been 
the  wise  mentor  of  George  Borrow  is  in  itself  to  be 
no  small  thing  in  the  record  of  letters.  There  is  a 
considerable  correspondence  between  Taylor  and  Sir 
Richard  Phillips  in  Robberds's  Memoir,  and  Phillips 
seemed  always  anxious  to  secure  articles  from  Taylor 
for  the  Monthly,  and  even  books  for  his  publishing- 
house.  Hence  the  introduction  from  Taylor  that 
Borrow  carried  to  London  might  have  been  most 
effective  if  Phillips  had  had  any  use  for  poor  and 
impracticable  would-be  authors. 

^  Reprinted  in  Carlyle's  Miscellanies. 


CHAPTER   Vll 

GEORGE  BORROWS  NORWICH— THE  GRAMMAR 

SCHOOL 

When   George   Borrow   first   entered   Norwich   after 
the  long  journey  from  Edinburgh,  Joseph  John  Gurney, 
born  1788,  was  twenty-six  years  of  age,  and  William 
Taylor,  born  1765,  was  forty-nine.     Borrow  was  eleven 
years  of  age.    Captain  Borrow  took  temporary  lodgings 
at  the  Crown  and  Angel  Inn  in  St.  Stephen's  Street, 
George   was    sent   to   the    Grammar    School,   and   his 
elder   brother  started  to  learn  drawing  and  painting 
with  John  Crome  ('  Old  Crome')  of  many  a  fine  land- 
scape.    But  the  wanderings  of  the  family  were  not  yet 
over.     Napoleon   escaped   from   Elba,  and   the  West 
Norfolk  INlilitia  were  again  put  on  the  march.     This 
time  it  was  Ireland  to  which  they  were  destined,  and 
we   have   already   shadowed   forth,  with   the   help   of 
Lavengro,  that  momentous  episode.     The  victory  of 
Waterloo  gave  Europe  peace,  and  in  1816  the  Borrow 
family  returned  to  Norwich,  there  to  pass  many  quiet 
years.     In  1819  Captain  Borrow  was  pensioned — eight 
shillings  a  day.     From  1816  till  his  fiither's  death  in 
1824  Borrow  lived  in  Norwich  with  his  family.     Their 
home  was  in  King's  Court,  Willow  Lane,  a  modest 
one-storey  house  in  a  cul  cle  sac,  which  we  have  already 
described.     In    King's    Court,   Willow  Lane,   Borrow 
lived  at  intervals  until  his  marriage  in  1840,  and  his 


70 


NORWICH— THE  GRAMMAR  SCHOOL    71 

mother    continued    to    live    in    the    house    until,    in 
1849,  she    agreed    to  join   her   son   and   daughter-in- 
law    at    Oulton.     Yet   the    house    comes    little    into 
the  story  of  Borrow's  life,  as  do  the  early  houses  of 
many  great  men  of  letters,  nor  do  subsequent  houses 
come  into  his   story ;  the   house  at    Oulton    and  the 
house    at    Hereford    Square    are    equally    barren    of 
association ;  the  broad  highway  and  the  windy  heath 
were    Borrow's    natural    home.       He    was    never    a 
*  civilised '  being ;  he   never  shone   in   drawing-rooms. 
Let  us,  however,  return   to   Borrow's  school-days,  of 
which  the  records  are  all  too  scanty,  and  not  in  the  least 
invigorating.     The  Norwich  Grammar  School  has  an 
interesting    tradition.        We    pass    to    the    cathedral 
through   the   beautiful  Erpingham   Gate   built   about 
1420    by    Sir   Thomas   Erpingham,    and   we    find    the 
school  on  the  left.     It  was  originally  a  chapel,  and  the 
porch  is  at  least  five  hundred  years  old.    The  schoolroom 
is  sufficiently  old-world-looking  for  us  to  imagine  the 
schoolboys   of  past  generations  sitting  at  the  various 
desks.      The   school   was   founded   in    1547,    but   the 
registers  have  been  lost,  and  so  we  know  little  of  its 
famous  pupils  of  earlier  days.     Lord  Nelson  and  Rajah 
Brooke   are   the   two   names   of  men    of  action   that 
stand  out  most  honourably  in  modern  times  among  the 
scholars.^      In  literature  Borrow  had  but  one  school- 
fellow,  who   afterwards    came    to    distinction— James 
Martineau.     Borrow's   headmaster  was   the   Reverend 
Edward  Valpy,  who  held  the  office  from  1810  to  1829, 
and  to  whom  is  credited  the  destruction  of  the  school 

^  In  earlier  times  we  have  the  names  of  Matthew  Parker,  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury  ;  Edward  Coke,  Lord  Chief  Justice ;  John  Caius,  the  founder  of 
Caius  College,  Cambridge  ;  and  Samuel  Clarke,  divine  and  metaphysician  ; 
and,  indeed,  a  very  considerable  list  of  England's  worthies. 


72     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

archives.  Borrow's  two  years  of  the  Grammar  School 
were  not  happy  ones.  Borrow,  as  we  have  shown,  was 
not  of  the  stuff  of  which  happy  schoolboys  are  made. 
He  had  been  a  wanderer — Scotland,  Ireland,  and  many 
parts  of  England  had  assisted  in  a  fragmentary  educa- 
tion ;  he  was  now  thirteen  years  of  age,  and  already  a 
vagabond  at  heart.  But  let  us  hear  Dr.  Augustus 
Jessopp,  who  was  headmaster  of  the  same  Grammar 
School  from  1859  to  1879.  Writing  of  a  meeting 
of  old  Norvicensians  to  greet  the  Rajah,  Sir  James 
Brooke,  in  1858,  when  there  was  a  great '  whip '  of  the 
'old  boys,'  Dr.  Jessopp  tells  us  that  Borrow,  then 
living  at  Yarmouth,  did  not  put  in  an  appearance 
among  his  schoolfellows  : 

My  belief  is  that  he  never  was  popular  among  them,  that  he 
never  attained  a  high  place  in  the  school,  and  he  was  a  '  free  boy/ 
In  those  days  there  were  a  certain  number  of  day  boys  at  Norwich 
school,  who  were  nominated  by  members  of  the  Corporation,  and 
who  paid  no  tuition  fees ;  they  had  to  submit  to  a  certain  amount 
of  snubbing  at  the  hands  of  the  boarders,  wlio  for  the  most  part 
were  the  sons  of  the  county  gentry.  Of  course,  such  a  proud  boy 
as  George  Borrow  would  resent  this,  and  it  seems  to  have  rankled 
with  him  all  through  his  life.  .  .  .  To  talk  of  Borrow  as  a 
'scholar'  is  absurd.  'A  picker-up  of  learning's  crumbs'  he  was, 
but  he  was  absolutely  without  any  of  the  training  or  the  instincts 
of  a  scholar.  He  had  had  little  education  till  he  came  to 
Norwich,  and  was  at  the  Grammar  School  little  more  than  two 
years.  It  is  pretty  certain  that  he  knew  no  Greek  when  he 
entered  there,  and  he  never  seems  to  have  acquired  more  than 
the  elements  of  that  language.^ 

Yet  the  only  real  influence  that  Borrow  carried  away 
from  the  Grammar  School  was  concerned  with  foreign 
languages.      He  did  take  to  the  French   master   and 

1  '  Lights  on  Borrow-/  by  the  Rev.  Augustus  Jessopp,  D.D.,  Hon.  Canon 
of  Norwich  Cathedral,  in  The  Daily  Chronicle,  30th  April  1900. 


Jayro/,l  i^  i, 

THE  ERPINGHAM  GATE  AND  THE  GRAMMAR  SCHOOL,  NORWICH 

We  pass  through  the  Erpingham  Gate  direct  to  the  Cathedral,  the  Grammar 
School  being  on  our  left.  Here  it  is  on  our  right.  Facing  tiie  school  is  a 
statue  of  Lord  Nelson,  who  was  at  school  here  about  1768-70.      Borrow  was 

at  school  here  1816-18. 


72 


NORWICH— THE  GRAMMAR  SCHOOL    73 

exiled  priest,  Thomas  d'Eterville,  a  native  of  Caen,  who 
had  emigrated  to  Norwich  in  1793.  D'Eterville  taught 
French,  Italian,  and  apparently,  to  Borrow,  a  little 
Spanish ;  and  Borrow,  with  his  wonderful  memory, 
must  have  been  his  favourite  pupil.  In  his  edition 
of  LavengTo  Dr.  Knapp  publishes  a  brief  dialogue 
between  master  and  pupil,  which  gives  us  an  amusing 
glimpse  of  the  worthy  d'Eterville,  whom  the  boys  called 
'poor  old  Detterville.'  In  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth 
chapters  of  Lavengro  he  is  pleasantly  described  by 
his  pupil,  who  adds,  with  characteristic  '  bluff,'  that 
d'Eterville  said  '  on  our  arrival  at  the  conclusion  of 
Dante's  Hell,  "  vous  serez  un  jour  un  grand  philologue, 
mon  cher."' 

Borrow's  biographers  have  dwelt  at  length  upon 
one  episode  of  his  schooldays — the  flogging  he  received 
from  Valpy  for  playing  truant  with  three  other  boys. 
One,  by  name  John  Dalrymple,  faltered  on  the  way, 
the  two  faithful  followers  of  George  in  his  escapade 
being  two  brothers  named  Theodosius  and  Francis 
Purland,  whose  father  kept  a  chemist's  shop  in  Norwich. 
The  three  boys  wandered  away  as  far  as  Acle,  eleven 
miles  from  Norwich,  whence  they  were  ignominiously 
brought  back  and  birched.  John  Dalrymple's  brother 
Arthur,  son  of  a  distinguished  Norwich  surgeon, 
who  became  Clerk  of  the  Peace  at  Norwich  in  1854, 
and  died  in  1868,  has  left  a  memorandum  concerning 
Borrow,  from  which  I  take  the  following  extract  ^ : 

'  I  was  at  school  with  Borrow  at  the  Free  School,  Norwich, 
under  the  Rev.  E.  Valpy.     He  was  an  odd,  wild  boy,  and  always 

'  The  whole  memorandum  on  a  sheet  of  note-paper,  signed  A.  D.,  is  in  the 
possession  of  Mrs.  James  Stuart  of  Carrow  Abbey,  Norwich,  who  has  kindly 
lent  it  to  me. 


74     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

wanting  to  turn  Robinson  Crusoe  or  Buccaneer,  My  brother 
John  was  about  Borrow's  age,  and  on  one  occasion  Borrow,  John, 
and  another,  whose  name  I  forget,  determined  to  run  away  and 
turn  pirates.  John  carried  an  old  horse  pistol  and  some  potatoes 
as  his  contribution  to  the  general  stock,  but  his  zeal  was  soon 
exhausted,  he  turned  back  at  Thorpe  Lunatic  Asylum;  but  Borrow 
went  off  to  Yarmouth,  and  lived  on  the  Caister  Denes  for  a  few 
days.  I  don't  remember  hearing  of  any  exploits.  He  had  a 
wonderful  facility  for  learning  languages,  which,  however,  he 
never  appears  to  have  turned  to  account. 

James  Martineau,  afterwards  a  popular  preacher  and 
a  distinguished  theologian  of  the  Unitarian  creed,  here 
comes  into  the  story.  He  was  a  contemporary  with 
Borrow  at  the  Norwich  Grammar  School  as  akeady 
stated,  but  the  two  boys  had  Httle  in  common. 
There  was  nothing  of  the  vagabond  about  James 
JNIartineau,  and  concerning  Borrow — if  on  no  other 
subject — he  would  probably  have  agreed  with  his  sister 
Harriet,  whose  views  we  shall  quote  in  a  later  chapter. 
In  Martineau's  Memoirs,  voluminous  and  dull,  there  is 
only  one  reference  to  Borrow;^  but  a  correspondent  once 
ventured  to  approach  the  eminent  divine  concerning 
the  rumour  as  to  Martineau's  part  in  the  birching  of 
the  author  of  71ie  Bible  in  Spain,  and  received  the 
following  letter : 

35  Gordon  Square^  London^  W.C.j  December  Q,  1895. 
Dear  Sir, — Two  or  three  years  ago  Mr.  Egmont  Hake  (author, 
I  think,  of  a  life  of  Gordon)  sought  an  interview  with  me,  as  re- 
puted to  be  Borrow's  sole  surviving  schoolfellow,  in  order  to  gather 
information  or  test  traditions  about  his  schooldays.  This  was  with 
a  view  to  a  memoir  which  he  was  compiling,  he  said,  out  of  the 

^  This  is  a  contemptuous  reference  in  Martineau's  own  words  to  '  George 
Borrow^  the  writer  and  actor  of  romance,'  in  the  allusion  to  Martineau's 
schoolfellows  under  Edward  Valpy.  Martineau  was  at  the  Norwich  Gi-ammar 
School  for  four  years — from  1816  to  1819.  See  Life  and  Letters,  by  James 
Drummond  and  C.  B.  Upton,  vol.  i.  pp.  16,  17. 


NORWICH— THE  GRAMMAR  SCHOOL    75 

literary  remains  which  had  been  committed  to  him  by  his  executors. 
I  communicated  to  him  such  recollections  as  I  could  clearly  depend 
upon  and  leave  at  his  disposal  for  publication  or  for  suppression 
as  he  might  think  fit.  Under  these  circumstances  I  feel  that  they 
are  rightfully  his,  and  that  I  am  restrained  from  placing  them  at 
disposal  elsewhere  unless  and  until  he  renounces  his  claim  upon 
them.  But  though  I  cannot  repeat  them  at  length  for  public  use, 
I  am  not  precluded  from  correcting  inaccuracies  in  stories  already 
in  circulation,  and  may  therefore  say  that  Mr.  Arthur  Dalrymple's 
version  of  the  Yarmouth  escapade  is  wrong  in  making  his  brother 
John  a  partner  in  the  transaction.  John  had  quite  too  much 
sense  for  that ;  the  only  victims  of  Sorrow's  romance  were  two  or 
three  silly  boys — mere  lackeys  of  Borrow's  commanding  will — who 
helped  him  to  make  up  a  kit  for  the  common  knapsack  by  pilfer- 
ings  out  of  their  fathers"'  shops. 

The  Norwich  gentleman  who  fell  in  with  the  boys  lying  in 
the  hedgerow  near  the  half-way  inn  knew  one  of  them,  and 
wormed  out  of  him  the  drift  of  their  enterprise,  and  engaging 
a  postchaise  packed  them  all  into  it,  and  in  his  gig  saw  them 
safe  home. 

It  is  true  that  I  had  to  hoist  (not  '  horse ')  Borrow  for  his 
flogging,  but  not  that  there  was  anything  exceptional  or  capable 
of  leaving  permanent  scars  in  the  infliction.  Mr.  Valpy  was  not 
given  to  excess  of  that  kind. 

I  have  never  read  Lavcngro^  and  cannot  give  any  opinion  about 
the  correct  spelling  of  the  '  Exul  sacerdos '  name. 

Borrow's  romance  and  William  Taylor's  love  of  paradox  would 
doubtless  often  run  together,  like  a  pair  of  Avell-matched  steeds, 
and  carry  them  away  in  the  same  direction.  But  there  was  a 
strong — almost  wild — religious  sentiment  in  Borrow,  of  which 
only  faint  traces  appear  in  W.  T.  In  Borrow  it  had  always  a 
tendency  to  pass  from  a  sympathetic  to  an  antipathetic  form.  He 
used  to  gather  about  him  three  or  four  favourite  schoolfellows, 
after  they  had  learned  their  class  lesson  and  before  the  class  was 
called  up,  and  with  a  sheet  of  paper  and  book  on  his  knee,  invent 
and  tell  a  story,  making  rapid  little  pictures  of  each  dramatis 
persona  that  came  upon  the  stage.  The  plot  was  woven  and 
spread  out  with  much  ingenuity,  and  the  characters  were  various 


76     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

and  well  discriminated.  But  two  of  them  were  sure  to  turn  up  in 
every  tale,  the  Devil  and  the  Pope,  and  the  working  of  the  drama 
invariably  had  the  same  issue — the  utter  ruin  and  disgrace  of 
these  two  potentates.  I  had  often  thought  that  there  was  a 
presage  here  of  the  mission  which  produced  The  Bible  in  Spain. — 
I  am,  dear  sir,  very  truly  yours,  James  Martineau.^ 

Yet  it  is  amusing  to  trace  the  story  through  various 
phases.  Dr.  Martineau's  letter  was  the  outcome  of 
his  attention  being  called  to  a  statement  made  in  a 
letter  written  by  a  lady  in  Hampstead  to  a  friend  in 
Norwich,  which  runs  as  follows  : 

nth  Nov.  1893. 

Dr.  Martineau,  to  amuse  some  boys  at  a  school  treat,  told  us 
about  George  Borrow,  his  schoolfellow :  he  was  always  reading 
adventures  of  smugglers  and  pirates,  etc.,  and  at  last,  to  carry  out 
his  ideas,  got  a  set  of  his  schoolfellows  to  promise  to  join  him  in 
an  expedition  to  Yarmouth,  where  he  had  heard  of  a  ship  that  he 
thought  would  take  them.  The  boys  saved  all  the  food  they 
could  from  their  meals,  and  what  money  they  had,  and  one 
morning  started  very  early  to  walk  to  Yarmouth.  They  got  half- 
way— to  Blofield,  I  think — when  they  were  so  tired  they  had  to 
rest  by  the  roadside,  and  eat  their  lunch.  While  they  were 
resting  a  gentleman,  whose  son  was  at  the  Free  School,  passed  in 
his  gig.  He  thought  it  was  very  odd  so  many  boys,  some  of 
whom  he  had  seen,  should  be  waiting  about,  so  he  drove  back  and 
asked  them  if  they  w^ould  come  to  dine  with  him  at  the  inn.  Of 
course  they  were  only  too  glad,  poor  boys  :  but  as  soon  as  he  had 
got  them  all  in  he  sent  his  servant  with  a  letter  to  Mr.  Valpy, 
who  sent  a  coach  and  brought  them  all  back.  You  know  what  a 
cruel  man  that  Dr.  V.  was.  He  made  Dr.  Martineau  take  poor 
Borrow  on  his  back,  'horse  him,'  I  think  he  called  it,  and  flogged 
him  so  that  Dr.  M.  said  he  would  carry  the  marks  for  the  rest  of 
his  life,  and  he  had  to  keep  his  bed  for  a  fortnight.     The  other 


*  Reprint  from  an  article  by  W.  A.  Dutt  on  '  George  Borrow  and  Jamee 
Martineau '  in  The  Sphere  for  30th  August  1902.  The  letter  was  written  to 
Mr.  James  Hooper,  of  Norwich. 


NORAVICH— THE  GRAMMAR  SCHOOL    77 

boys  got  off  with  lighter  punishment,  but  Borrow  was  the  ring- 
leader. Those  were  the  'good  old  times'"!  I  have  heard  Dr.  M. 
say  that  not  for  another  life  would  he  go  through  the  misery  he 
suffered  as  '  town  boy '  at  that  school. 

Miss  Frances  Power  Cobbe,  who  lived  next  door  to 
Borrow  in  Hereford  Square,  Brompton,  in  the  'sixties, 
as  we  shall  see  later,  has  a  word  to  say  on  the 
point : 

Dr.  Martineau  once  told  me  that  he  and  Borrow  had  been 
schoolfellows  at  Norwich  some  sixty  years  before.  Borrow  had 
persuaded  several  of  his  other  companions  to  rob  their  fathers' 
tills,  and  then  the  party  set  forth  to  join  some  smugglers  on  the 
coast.  By  degrees  the  truants  all  fell  out  of  line  and  were  picked 
up,  tired  and  hungry,  along  the  road,  and  brought  back  to 
Norwich  School,  where  condign  chastisement  awaited  them. 
George  Borrow,  it  seems,  received  his  large  share  horsed  on  James 
Martineau's  back !  The  early  connection  between  the  two  old 
men,  as  I  knew  them,  was  irresistibly  comic  to  my  mind.  Some- 
how when  I  asked  Mr.  Borrow  once  to  come  and  meet  some 
friends  at  our  house  he  accepted  our  invitation  as  usual,  but,  on 
finding  that  Dr.  Martineau  was  to  be  of  the  party,  hastily  with- 
drew his  acceptance  on  a  transparent  excuse;  nor  did  he  ever 
after  attend  our  little  assemblies  without  first  ascertaining  that 
Dr.  Martineau  was  not  to  be  present.^ 

James  Martineau  died  in  1900,  but  the  last  of 
Borrow's  schoolfellows  to  die  was,  I  think,  Mr.  William 
Edmund  Image,  a  Justice  of  the  Peace  and  Deputy 
Lieutenant  for  Suffolk.  He  resided  at  Herringswell 
House,  near  Mildenhall,  where  he  died  in  1903,  aged 
96  years. 

Mr.  Valpy  of  the  Norwich  Grammar  School  is 
scarcely  to  be  blamed  that  he  was  not  able  to  make 
separate  rules  for  a  quite  abnormal  boy.      Yet,  if  he 

*  Life  of  Frances  Power  Cobbe  as  told  by  Herself,  ch.  xvii. 


78     GEOKGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

could  have  known,  Borrow  was  better  employed  play- 
ing truant  and  living  up  to  his  life-work  as  a  glorified 
vagabond  than  in  studying  in  the  ordinary  school 
routine.  George  Borrow  belonged  to  a  type  of  boy 
— there  are  many  such — who  learn  much  more  out 
of  school  than  in  its  bounds ;  and  the  boy  Borrow, 
picking  up  brother  vagabonds  in  Tombland  Fair,  and 
already  beginning,  in  his  own  peculiar  way,  his  language 
craze,  was  laying  the  foundations  that  made  Lavengi^o 
possible. 


CHAPTER    VIII 

GEORGE  BORROWS  NORWICH— THE  LAWYER'S  OFFICE 

Doubts  were  very  frequently  expressed  in  Borrow's 
lifetime  as  to  his  having  really  been  articled  to  a 
solicitor,  but  the  indefatigable  Dr.  Knapp  set  that 
point  at  rest  by  reference  to  the  Record  Office.  Borrow 
was  articled  to  Simpson  and  Rackham  of  Tuck's  Court, 
St.  Giles's,  Norwich,  '  for  the  term  of  five  years ' — from 
March  1819  to  March  1824 — and  these  five  years  were 
spent  in  and  about  Norwich,  and  were  full  of  adventure 
of  a  kind  with  which  the  law  had  nothing  to  do.  If 
Borrow  had  had  the  makings  of  a  lawyer  he  could  not 
have  entered  the  profession  under  happier  auspices. 
The  firm  was  an  old  established  one  even  in  his  day. 
It  had  been  established  in  Tuck's  Court  as  Simpson 
and  Rackham,  then  it  became  Rackham  and  Morse, 
Rackham,  Cooke  and  Rackham,  and  Rackham  and  Cooke ; 
finally,  Tom  Rackham,  a  famous  Norwich  man  in  his 
day,  moved  to  another  office,  and  the  firm  of  lawyers 
who  occupy  the  original  offices  in  our  day  is  called 
Leathes  Prior  and  Sons.  Borrow  has  told  us  frankly 
what  a  poor  lawyer's  clerk  he  made — he  was  always 
thinking  of  things  remote  from  that  profession,  of 
gypsies,  of  prize-fighters,  and  of  word-makers.  Yet  he 
loved  the  head  of  the  firm,  William  Simpson,  who  must 
have  been  a  kind  and  tolerant  guide  to  the  curious 
youth.     Simpson  was  for  a  time  Town  Clerk  of  Nor- 

79 


80     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

wich,  and  his  portrait  hangs  in  the  Blackfriars  Hall. 
Borrow  went  to  live  with  Mr.  Simpson  in  the  Upper 
Close  near  the  Grammar  School.  Archdeacon  Groome 
recalled  having  seen  Borrow  '  reserved  and  solitary ' 
haunting  the  precincts  of  the  playground ;  another 
schoolboy,  William  Drake,  remembered  him  as  'tall, 
spare,  dark-complexioned.'  ^  Here  is  Borrow's  account 
of  his  master  and  of  his  work  : 

A  more  respectable-looking  individual  was  never  seen ;  he 
really  looked  what  he  was,  a  gentleman  of  the  law — there  was 
nothing  of  the  pettifogger  about  him  :  somewhat  under  the  middle 
size,  and  somewhat  rotund  in  person,  he  was  always  dressed  in  a 
full  suit  of  black,  never  worn  long  enough  to  become  threadbare. 
His  face  was  rubicund,  and  not  without  keenness ;  but  the  most 
remarkable  thing  about  him  was  the  crown  of  his  head,  which  was 
bald,  and  shone  like  polished  ivory,  nothing  more  white,  smooth, 
and  lustrous.  Some  people  have  said  that  he  wore  false  calves, 
probably  because  his  black  silk  stockings  never  exhibited  a  wrinkle ; 
they  might  just  as  well  have  said  that  he  waddled,  because  his 
boots  creaked ;  for  these  last,  which  were  always  without  a  speck, 
and  polished  as  his  crown,  though  of  a  different  hue,  did  creak,  as 
he  walked  rather  slowly.  I  cannot  say  that  I  ever  saw  him  walk 
fast. 

He  had  a  handsome  practice,  and  might  have  died  a  very  rich 
man,  much  richer  than  he  did,  had  he  not  been  in  the  habit  of 
giving  rather  expensive  dinners  to  certain  great  people,  who  gave 
him  nothing  in  return,  except  their  company  ;  I  could  never  dis- 
cover his  reasons  for  doing  so,  as  he  always  appeared  to  me  a 
remarkably  quiet  man,  by  nature  averse  to  noise  and  bustle ;  but 
in  all  dispositions  there  are  anomalies.  I  have  already  said  that 
he  lived  in  a  handsome  house,  and  I  may  as  well  here  add  that  he 
had  a  very  handsome  wife,  who  both  dressed  and  talked  exceedingly 
well. 

So  I  sat  behind  the  deal  desk,  engaged  in  copying  documents 
of  various  kinds ;  and  in  the  apartment  in  which  I  sat,  and  in  the 
adjoining  ones,  there  were  others,  some  of  whom  likewise  copied 

'  Norvicensian,  1888,  p.  177. 


WILLIAM  SIMPSON 

From  a  portrait  by  Thomas  Phillips,  R.A. 

Mr.  Simpson  was  Chamberlain  of  the  city  of  Norwich  and  Treasurer  of  the 
county  of  Norfolk.  He  was  Town-Clerk  of  Norwich  in  1826,  and  has  an 
interest  in  connection  with  George  Borrow  in  that  Borrow  was  articled  to  him 
as  a  lawyer's  clerk  and  describes  him  mll'/M  IVa/es  a.s  '  the  greatest  solicitor  in 
East  Anglia — indeed,  I  may  say  the  prince  of  all  English  solicitors.' 

The  portrait  hangs  in  the  Black  Friars  Hall,  Norwich. 


NORWICH— THE  T.AWYER'S  OFFICE     81 

documents,  while  some  were  engaged  in  the  yet  more  difficult  task 
of  drawing  them  up  ;  and  some  of  these,  sons  of  nobody,  were  paid 
for  the  work  they  did,  whilst  others,  like  myself,  sons  of  somebody, 
paid  for  being  permitted  to  work,  which,  as  our  principal  observed, 
was  but  reasonable,  forasmuch  as  we  not  unfrequently  utterly 
spoiled  the  greater  part  of  the  work  intrusted  to  our  hands.^ 

And  he  goes  on  to  tell  us  that  he  studied  the  Welsh 
language  and  later  the  Danish ;  his  master  said  that 
his  inattention  would  assuredly  make  him  a  bankrupt, 
and  his  father  sighed  over  his  eccentric  and  impractic- 
able son.  The  passion  for  languages  had  indeed  caught 
hold  of  Borrow.  Among  my  Borrow  papers  I  find  a 
memorandum  in  the  handwriting  of  his  stepdaughter  in 
which  she  says : 

I  have  often  heard  his  mother  say,  that  when  a  mere  child  of 
eight  or  nine  years,  all  his  pocket-money  was  spent  in  purchasing 
foreign  Dictionaries  and  Grammars ;  he  formed  an  acquaintance 
with  an  old  woman  who  kept  a  bookstall  in  the  market-place  of 
Norwich,  whose  son  went  voyages  to  Holland  with  cattle,  and 
brought  home  Dutch  books,  which  were  eagerly  bought  by  little 
George.  One  day  the  old  woman  was  crying,  and  told  him  that 
her  son  was  in  prison.  '  For  doing  what .'' '  asked  the  child.  '  For 
taking  a  silk  handkerchief  out  of  a  gentleman"'s  pocket.'  '  Then,' 
said  the  boy, '  your  son  stole  the  pocket  handkerchief  .^ ""  '  No  dear, 
no,  my  son  did  not  steal, — he  only  gly faked.' 

We  have  no  difficulty  in  recognising  here  the 
heroine  of  the  Moll  Flanders  episode  in  Lavengro. 
But  it  was  not  from  casual  meetings  with  Welsh 
grooms  and  Danes  and  Dutchmen  that  Borrow  ac- 
quired even  such  command  of  various  languages  as  was 
undoubtedly  his.  We  have  it  on  the  authority  of  an 
old  fellow-pupil  at  the  Grammar  School,  Burcham, 
afterwards  a  London  police-magistrate,  that  William 

^  Lavengro,  ch.  xix. 

V 


82     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Taylor  gave  him  lessons  in  German/  but  he  acquired 
most  of  his  varied  knowledge  in  these  impressionable 
years  in  the  Corporation  Library  of  Norwich.  Dr. 
Knapp  found,  in  his  most  laudable  examination  of 
some  of  the  books,  Borrow's  neat  pencil  notes,  the 
making  of  which  was  not  laudable  on  the  part  of  his 
hero.  One  book  here  marked  was  on  ancient  Danish 
literature,  the  author  of  which,  Olaus  Wormius,  gave 
him  the  hint  for  calling  himself  Olaus  Borrow  for  a 
time — a  signature  that  we  find  in  some  of  Borrow's 
published  translations.  Borrow  at  this  time  had  aspira- 
tions of  a  literary  kind,  and  Thomas  Campbell  accepted 
a  translation  of  Schiller's  Diver,  which  was  signed 
*0.  B.'  There  were  also  translations  from  the  German, 
Dutch,  Swedish,  and  Danish,  in  the  Monthly  Magazine. 
Clearly  Borrow  was  becoming  a  formidable  linguist,  if 
not  a  very  exact  master  of  words.  Still  he  remained  a 
vagabond,  and  loved  to  wander  over  Mousehold  Heath, 
to  the  gypsy  encampment,  and  to  make  friends  with 
the  Romany  folk ;  he  loved  also  to  haunt  the  horse 
fairs  for  which  Norwich  was  so  celebrated ;  and  he  was 
not  averse  from  the  companionship  of  wilder  spirits 
who  loved  pugilism,  if  we  may  trust  Lavengro,  and  if 
we  may  assume,  as  we  justly  may,  that  he  many  times 
cast  youthful,  sympathetic  eyes  on  John  Thurtell  in 
these  years,  the  to-be  murderer  of  Weare,  then  actually 
living  with  his  father  in  a  house  on  the  Ipswich  Road, 
Thurtell,  the  father,  being  in  no  mean  position  in  the 
city — an  alderman,  and  a  sheriff  in  1815.  Yes,  there 
was  plenty  to  do  and  to  see  in  Norwich,  and  Borrow's 
memories  of  it  were  nearly  always  kindly  : 

A  fine  old  city,  truly,  is  that,  view  it  from  whatever  side  you 
will;  but  it  shows  best  from  the  east,  where  ground,  bold  and 

1  The  Britannia  newspaper,  26th  June  1851. 


NORWICH— THE  LAWYER'S  OFFICE     83 

elevated,  overlooks  the  fair  and  fertile  valley  in  which  it  stands. 
Gazing  from  those  heights,  the  eye  beholds  a  scene  which  cannot 
fail  to  awaken,  even  in  the  least  sensitive  bosom,  feelings  of 
pleasure  and  admiration.  At  the  foot  of  the  heights  flows  a 
narrow  and  deep  river,  with  an  antique  bridge  communicating 
with  a  long  and  narrow  suburb,  flanked  on  either  side  by  rich 
meadows  of  the  brightest  green,  beyond  which  spreads  the  city ; 
the  fine  old  city,  perhaps  the  most  curious  specimen  at  present 
extant  of  the  genuine  old  English  town.  Yes,  there  it  spreads 
from  north  to  south,  with  its  venerable  houses,  its  numerous 
gardens,  its  thrice  twelve  churches,  its  mighty  mound,  which,  if 
tradition  speaks  true,  was  raised  by  human  hands  to  serve  as  the 
grave-heap  of  an  old  heathen  king,  who  sits  deep  within  it,  with 
his  sword  in  his  hand,  and  his  gold  and  silver  treasures  about  him. 
There  is  a  grey  old  castle  upon  the  top  of  that  mighty  mound ; 
and  yonder,  rising  three  hundred  feet  above  the  soil,  from  among 
those  noble  forest  trees,  behold  that  old  Norman  master-work,  that 
cloud-encircled  cathedral  spire,  around  which  a  garrulous  army  of 
rooks  and  choughs  continually  wheel  their  flight.  Now,  who  can 
wonder  that  the  children  of  that  fine  old  city  are  proud  of  her, 
and  offer  up  prayers  for  her  prosperity  ?  I  myself,  who  was  not 
born  within  her  walls,  offer  up  prayers  for  her  prosperity,  that  want 
may  never  visit  her  cottages,  vice  her  palaces,  and  that  the  abomi- 
nation of  idolatry  may  never  pollute  her  temples. 

But  at  the  very  centre  of  Borrows  Norwich  life  was 
William  Taylor,  concerning  whom  we  have  already 
written  much.  It  was  a  Jew  named  Mousha,  a  quack 
it  appears,  who  pretended  to  know  German  and  Hebrew, 
and  had  but  a  smattering  of  either  language,  who  first 
introduced  Borrow  to  Taylor,  and  there  is  a  fine  dialogue 
between  the  two  in  LaveJigro,  of  which  this  is  the  closing 
fragment : 

'  Are  you  happy  ?  "*  said  the  young  man. 

'  Why,  no  !  And,  between  ourselves,  it  is  that  which  induces 
me  to  doubt  sometimes  the  truth  of  my  opinions.  My  life,  upon 
the  whole,  I  consider  a  failure ;  on  which  account,  I  would  not 
counsel  you,  or  anyone,  to  follow  my  example  too  closely.     It  is 


84     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

getting  late,  and  you  had  better  be  going,  especially  as  your 
father,  you  say,  is  anxious  about  you.  But,  as  we  may  never 
meet  again,  I  think  there  are  three  things  which  I  may  safely 
venture  to  press  upon  you.  The  first  is,  that  the  decencies  and 
gentlenesses  should  never  be  lost  sight  of,  as  the  practice  of  the 
decencies  and  gentlenesses  is  at  all  times  compatible  with  independ- 
ence of  thought  and  action.  The  second  thing  which  I  would  wish 
to  impress  upon  you  is,  that  there  is  always  some  eye  upon  us  ;  and 
that  it  is  impossible  to  keep  anything  we  do  from  the  world,  as  it 
will  assuredly  be  divulged  by  somebody  as  soon  as  it  is  his  interest 
to  do  so.  The  third  thing  which  I  would  wish  to  press  upon 
you ' 

'  Yes,'  said  the  youth,  eagerly  bending  forward. 

'Is' — and  here  the  elderly  individual  laid  down  his  pipe  upon 
the  table — '  that  it  will  be  as  well  to  go  on  improving  yourself  in 
German  ! ' 

Taylor  it  was  who,  when  Borrow  determined  to  try 
his  fortunes  in  London  with  those  bundles  of  unsaleable 
manuscripts,  gave  him  introductions  to  Sir  Richard 
Phillips  and  to  Thomas  Campbell.  It  was  in  the 
agnostic  spirit  that  he  had  learned  from  Taylor  that  he 
wrote  during  this  period  to  his  one  friend  in  London, 
Roger  Kerrison.  Kerrison  was  grandson  of  Sir  Roger 
Kerrison,  INIayor  of  Norwich  in  1778,  as  his  son  Thomas 
was  after  him  in  1806.  Roger  was  articled,  as  was 
Borrow,  to  the  firm  of  Simpson  and  Rackham,  while  his 
brother  Allday  was  in  a  drapery  store  in  Norwich, 
but  with  mind  bent  on  commercial  life  in  Mexico. 
George  was  teaching  him  Spanish  in  these  years  as  a 
preparation  for  his  great  adventure.  Roger  had  gone 
to  London  to  continue  his  professional  experience.  He 
finally  became  a  Norwich  solicitor  and  died  in  1882. 
Allday  went  to  Zacatecas,  JNIexico,  and  acquired 
riches.  John  Borrow  followed  him  there  and  met 
with   an   early  death,  as  we  have  seen.     Borrow  and 


NOKWICH— THE  I.AWYEK'S  OFFICE     85 

Roger  Kerrison  were  great  friends  at  this  time ;  but 
when  Lavengro  was  written  they  had  ceased  to  be 
this,  and  Roger  is  described  merely  as  an  'acquaint- 
ance '  who  had  found  lodgings  for  him  on  his  first  visit 
to  London.  As  a  matter  of  fact  that  trip  to  London 
was  made  easy  for  Borrow  by  the  opportunity  given  to 
him  of  sharing  lodgings  with  Roger  Kerrison  at  Milman 
Street,  Bedford  Row,  where  Borrow  put  in  an  appear- 
ance on  1st  April  1824,  some  two  months  after  the 
following  letter  was  written  : 

To  Mr.  Roger  Kerrison,  18  Milman  Street, 
Bedford  Row. 

Norwich,  Jany.  20,  1824. 

Dearest  Rogeu, — I  did  not  imagine  when  we  separated  in  the 
street,  on  the  day  of  your  departure  from  Norwich,  that  we  should 
not  have  met  again :  I  had  intended  to  have  come  and  seen  you 
off,  but  happening  to  dine  at  W.  Barron's  I  got  into  discourse, 
and  the  hour  sHpt  past  me  unawares. 

I  have  been  again  for  the  last  fortnight  laid  up  with  that 
detestable  complaint  which  destroys  my  strength,  impairs  my 
understanding,  and  will  in  all  probability  send  me  to  the  grave,  for 
I  am  now  much  worse  than  when  you  saw  me  last.  But  nil 
desperandum  est,  if  ever  my  health  mends,  and  possibly  it  may  by 
the  time  my  clerkship  is  expired,  I  intend  to  live  in  London,  write 
plays,  poetry,  etc.,  abuse  religion  and  get  myself  prosecuted,  for  I 
would  not  for  an  ocean  of  gold  remain  any  longer  than  I  am  forced 
in  this  dull  and  gloomy  town. 

I  have  no  news  to  regale  you  with,  for  there  is  none  abroad, 
but  I  live  in  the  expectation  of  shortly  hearing  from  you,  and 
being  informed  of  your  plans  and  projects;  fear  not  to  be  prolix, 
for  the  slightest  particular  cannot  fail  of  being  interesting  to  one 
who  loves  you  far  better  than  parent  or  relation,  or  even  than  the 
God  whom  bigots  would  teach  him  to  adore,  and  who  subscribes 
himself.  Yours  unalterably,  George  Borrow.^ 

1  This  letter  is  in  the  possession  of  Mr.  J.  C.  Gould,  Trap  Hill  House, 
Loughton,  Essex. 


86     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Borrow  might  improve  his  German — not  sufficiently 
as  we  shall  see  in  our  next  chapter — but  he  would 
certainly  never  make  a  lawyer.  Long  years  afterwards, 
when,  as  an  old  man,  he  was  frequently  in  Norwich, 
he  not  seldom  called  at  that  office  in  Tuck's  Court, 
where  five  strange  years  of  his  life  had  been  spent. 
A  clerk  in  Rackham's  office  in  these  later  years  recalls 
him  waiting  for  the  principal  as  he  in  his  youth  had 
watched  others  waiting.^ 

^  Mr.  C.  F.  Martelli  of  Staple  Inn,  London,  who  has  so  generously  placed 
this  information  at  my  disposal.     Mr.  Martelli  writes  : 

'  Old  memories  brought  him  to  our  office  for  professional  advice,  and  there 
I  saw  something  of  him,  and  a  very  striking  personality  he  was,  and  a  rather 
difficult  client  to  do  business  with.  One  peculiarity  I  remember  was  that  he 
believed  himself  to  be  plagued  by  autograph  hunters,  and  was  reluctant  to 
trust  our  firm  with  his  signature  in  any  shape  or  form,  and  that  we  in  con- 
sequence had  some  trouble  in  inducing  him  to  sign  his  will.  I  have  seen 
him  sitting  over  my  fire  in  my  room  at  that  office  for  hours,  half  asleep,  and 
crooning  out  Romany  songs  while  waiting  for  my  chief.' 


CHAPTER    IX 

SIR  RICHARD  PHILLIPS 

'  That 's  a  strange  man  !  '  said  I  to  myself,  after  I  had  left  the  house, 
'he  is  eindently  very  clever ;  but  I  cannot  say  that  Hike  him  much  with 
his  Oxford  Reviews  and  Dairyman's  Daughters.' — Lavengro. 

Borrow  lost  his  father  on  the  28th  February  1824. 
He  reached  London  on  the  2nd  April  of  the  same  year, 
and  this  was  the  beginning  of  his  many  wanderings. 
He  was  armed  with  introductions  from  William  Taylor, 
and  with  some  translations  in  manuscript  from  Danish 
and  Welsh  poetry.  The  principal  introduction  was  to 
Sir  Richard  Philhps,  a  person  of  some  importance  in 
his  day,  who  has  so  far  received  but  inadequate  treat- 
ment in  our  own.^  Phillips  was  active  in  the  cause  of 
reform  at  a  certain  period  in  his  Hfe,  and  would  seem 
to  have  had  many  sterling  qualities  before  he  was 
spoiled  by  success.  He  was  born  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  Leicester,  and  his  father  was  '  in  the  farming 
line,'  and  wanted  him  to  work  on  the  farm,  but  he 
determined  to  seek  his  fortune  in  London.  After 
a  short  absence,  during  which  he  clearly  proved 
to  himself  that  he  was  not  at  present  qualified  to 
capture  London,  young  Phillips  returned  to  the  farm. 
Borrow  refers  to  his  patron's  vegetarianism,  and  on 
this   point  we  have   an  amusing  story  from  his  own 

^  The  few  lines  awarded  to  liini  in  Mumby's  Romance  of  Bookselling  are  an 
illustration  of  this. 

87 


88     GEORGE  BOKROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

pen !      He  had  been,  when  previously  on  the  farm,  in 
the  habit  of  attending  to  a  favourite  heifer : 

During  his  sojournment  in  London  this  animal  had  been 
killed ;  and  on  the  very  day  of  his  return  to  his  father's  house,  he 
partook  of  part  of  his  favourite  at  dinner,  without  his  being 
made  acquainted  with  the  circumstance  of  its  having  been 
slaughtered  during  his  absence.  On  learning  this,  however,  he 
experienced  a  sudden  indisposition ;  and  declared  that  so  great  an 
effect  had  the  idea  of  his  having  eaten  part  of  his  slaughtered 
favourite  upon  him,  that  he  would  never  again  taste  animal  food ; 
a  vow  to  which  he  has  hitherto  firmly  adhered.^ 

Farming  not  being  congenial,  Phillips  hired  a  small 
room  in  Leicester,  and  opened  a  school  for  instruction 
in  the  three  R's,  a  large  blue  flag  on  a  pole  being  his 
'  sign '  or  signal  to  the  inhabitants  of  Leicester,  who 
seem  to  have  sent  their  children  in  considerable  num- 
bers to  the  young  schoolmaster.  But  little  money  was 
to  be  made  out  of  schooling,  and  a  year  later  Phillips 
was,  by  the  kindness  of  friends,  started  in  a  small 
hosiery  shop  in  Leicester.  Throwing  himself  into 
politics  on  the  side  of  reform,  Phillips  now  started  the 
Leicester  Herald,  to  which  Dr.  Priestley  became  a  con- 
tributor. The  first  number  was  issued  gratis  in  May 
1792.  His  3Iemoir  informs  us  that  it  was  an  article 
in  this  newspaper  that  secured  for  its  proprietor  and 
editor  eighteen  months  imprisonment  in  Leicester  gaol, 

^  Memoirs  of  the  Public  and  Private  Life  of  Sir  Richard  Phillips,  King's 
High  Sheriff  for  the  City  of  London  and  the  County  of  Middlesex,  by  a  Citizen  of 
London  and  Assistants.  London,  1808.  This  Memoir  was  published  in  1808, 
many  years  before  the  death  of  Phillips,  and  was  clearly  inspired  and  partly 
written  by  him,  although  an  autograph  letter  before  me  from  one  Ralph 
Fell  shows  that  the  worthy  Fell  actually  received  £12  from  Phillips  for 
'compiling'  the  book.  A  portion  of  the  Memoir  may  have  been  written  by 
another  literary  hack  named  Pinkerton,  but  all  of  it  was  compiled  under  the 
direction  of  Phillips. 


SIR  mCHARD  PHILLIPS  89 

but  he  was  really  charged  with  selling  Paine's  Rights 
of  3Ia?i.  The  worthy  knight  had  probably  grown 
ashamed  of  The  Eights  of  31an  in  the  intervening 
years,  and  hence  the  reticence  of  the  memoir. 
Phillips's  gaoler  was  the  once  famous  Daniel  Lambert, 
the  notorious  '  fat  man  '  of  his  day.  In  gaol  PhiUips 
was  visited  by  Lord  Moira  and  the  Duke  of  Norfolk. 
It  was  this  Lord  Moira  who  said  in  the  House  of 
Lords  in  1797  that  'he  had  seen  in  Ireland  the  most 
absurd,  as  well  as  the  most  disgusting  tyranny  that  any 
nation  ever  groaned  under.'  Moira  became  Governor- 
General  of  Bengal  and  Commander-in-Chief  of  the 
Army  in  India.  The  Duke  of  Norfolk,  a  stanch 
Whig,  distinguished  himself  in  1798  by  a  famous 
toast  at  the  Crown  and  Anchor  Tavern,  Arundel 
Street,  Strand  : — '  Our  sovereign's  health — the  majesty 
of  the  people!'  which  greatly  offended  George  iii.,  who 
removed  Norfolk  from  his  lord-lieutenancy.  Phillips 
seems  to  have  had  a  very  lax  imprisonment,  as  he  con- 
ducted the  Herald  from  gaol,  contributing  in  particular 
a  weekly  letter.  Soon  after  his  release  he  disposed  of 
the  Herald,  or  permitted  it  to  die.  It  was  revived  a 
few  years  later  as  an  organ  of  Toryism.  He  had 
started  in  gaol  another  journal,  The  Museum,  and  he 
combined  this  with  his  hosiery  business  for  some  time 
longer,  when  an  opportune  fire  relieved  him  of  an 
apparently  uncongenial  burden,  and  with  the  insurance 
money  in  his  pocket  he  set  out  for  London  once  more. 
Here  he  started  as  a  hosier  in  St.  Paul's  Churchyard, 
lodging  meantime  in  the  house  of  a  milliner,  where  he 
fell  in  love  with  one  of  the  apprentices,  Miss  Griffiths, 
*  a  native  of  Wales.'  His  affections  were  won,  we  are 
naively  informed  in  the  Me7noir,  by  the  young  woman's 
talent  in  the  preparation  of  a  vegetable  pie.     This  is 


90     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

our  first  glimpse  of  Lady  Phillips — '  a  quiet,  respect- 
able woman,'  whom  Borrow  was  to  meet  at  dinner  long 
years  afterwards.  Inspired,  it  would  seem,  by  the  kindly 
exhortation  of  Dr.  Priestley,  he  now  transformed  his 
hosiery  business  in  St.  Paul's  Churchyard  into  a 
'  literary  repository,'  and  started  a  singularly  successful 
career  as  a  publisher.  There  he  produced  his  long- 
lived  periodical,  JVie  Monthlij  Magazine,  which  attained 
to  so  considerable  a  fame.  Dr.  Aikin,  a  friend  of 
Priestley's,  was  its  editor,  but  with  him  Phillips  had  a 
quarrel — the  first  of  his  many  literary  quarrels — and 
they  separated.  This  Dr.  Aikin  was  the  father  of  the 
better-known  Lucy  Aikin,  and  was  a  Nonconformist 
who  suffered  for  his  opinions  in  these  closing  years 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  even  as  Priestley  did.  He 
was  the  author  of  many  works,  including  the  once 
famous  Evenings  at  Home,  written  in  conjunction  with 
his  sister,  Mrs.  Barbauld  ;  ^  and  after  his  quarrel  with 
Phillips  he  founded  a  new  publication  issued  by 
the  house  of  Longman,  and  entitled  The  Atlienoeum. 
Hereupon  he  and  Phillips  quarrelled  again,  because 
Dr.  Aikin  described  himself  in  advertisements  of  The 
Athenceum  as  'J.  Aikin,  M.D.,  late  editor  of  The 
Monthli)  Magazine'  Aikin's  contributors  to  The 
Monthly  included  Capell  LofFt,  of  whom  we  know  too 
little,  and  Dr.  Wolcot,  of  whom  we  know  too  much. 
Meanwhile  Phillips's  publishing  business  grew  apace, 
and  he  removed  to  larger  premises  in  Bridge  Street, 
Blackfriars,  an  address  which  we  find  upon  many 
famous  publications  of  his  period.     A  catalogue  of  his 

^  Mr.  Arthur  Aikin  Brodribb  in  his  memoir  of  Aikin  in  the  Dictionary 
of  National  Biography  makes  the  interesting  but  astonishing  statement  that 
Aikin's  Life  of  Howard  'has  been  adopted,  without  acknowledgment,  by  a 
modern  writer.'  Mr.  Brodribb  apparently  knew  nothing  of  Dr.  Aikin's 
association  with  the  Monthly  Magazine  or  with  the  first  Athenceum. 


SIR  RICHARD  PHILLIPS  91 

books  lies  before  me  dcated  '  January  1805.'  It  includes 
many  works  still  upon  our  shelves.  Almon's  Memoirs 
and  Correspondence  of  John  Wilkes,  Samuel  Richard- 
son's Life  and  Correspondence,  for  example,  several  of 
the  works  of  Maria  Edgeworth,  including  her  3Ioral 
Tales,  many  of  the  works  of  William  Godwin,  includ- 
ing Caleb  Williams,  and  the  earlier  books  of  that  still 
interesting  woman  and  once  popular  novelist.  Lady 
Morgan,  whose  Poems  as  Sydney  Owenson  bears 
Phillips's  name  on  its  title-page,  as  does  also  her  first 
successful  novel  The  Wild  Irish  Girl,  and  other  of  her 
stories.  My  own  interest  in  Phillips  commenced  when 
I  met  him  in  the  pages  of  Lady  Morgan's  3Iemoirs} 
Thomas  Moore,  I^ady  INIorgan  tells  us, 

had  come  back  to  Dublin  from  London,  where  he  had  been  '  the 
guest  of  princes,  the  friend  of  peers,  the  translator  of  Anacreon  ! ' 
From  royal  palaces  and  noble  manors,  he  had  returned  to  his 
family  seat — a  grocer's  shop  at  the  corner  of  Little  Longford 
Street,  Angier  Sti'eet. 

Here,  in  a  little  room  over  the  shop,  Sydney  heard 
him  sing  two  of  his  songs,  and  was  inspired  thereby 
to  write  her  first  novels,  St.  Clair  and  The  Novice 
of  St.  Dominick.  The  first  was  published  in  Dublin  ; 
over  the  second  she  corresponded  with  Phillips,  and 
his  letters  to  her  commence  with  one  dated  from 
Bridge    Street,   6th   April   1805,   in   which    he  wishes 

1  I  have  no  less  than  four  memoirs  of  Lady  Morgan  on  my  shelves : — 
Passages  from  my  Autobiography ,  by  Sydney,  Lady  INIorgan  (Richard  Bentley, 
1859);  The  Friends,  Foes,  and  Adventures  of  Lady  Morgan,  by  William  John 
Fitzpatrick  (W.  B.  Kelly  :  Dublin,  1859) ;  Lady  Morgan:  Her  Career,  Literary 
and  Personal,  with  a  Glimpse  of  her  Friends,  and  A  Word  to  her  Calumniators, 
by  William  John  Fitzpatrick  (London:  Charles  J.  Skeet,  18G0);  Lady 
Morgan's  Memoirs:  Autobiography,  Diaries  and  Correspondence.  Two  vols. 
(London  :  W.  H.  Allen,  18G3). 


92     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

her  to   send   the  manuscript  of   The  Novice  to  him 
as    one   'often    (undeservedly)    complimented    as    the 
most  liberal   of  my   trade ! '     She   determined,  fresh 
from   a  governess  situation,  to  bring  the  manuscript 
herself.      Phillips  vi^as  charmed  with  his  new  author, 
and  really   seems  to  have  treated  her  very  liberally. 
He   insisted,    however,    on    having    llie    Novice   cut 
down  from  six  volumes  to  four,  and  she  was  wont 
to  say  that  nothing  but  regard  for  her  feelings  pre- 
vented him  from  reducing  it  to  three. ^     The  Novice  of 
St.  Doiii'inick  was  a  favourite  book  with  the  younger 
Pitt,  who  read  it  over  again  in  his  last  illness.     Then 
followed — in    1806 — Sydney    Owenson's    new    novel, 
The  Wild  Irish  Girl,  and  it  led  to  an  amusing  corre- 
spondence with  its  author  on  the  part  of  Phillips  on 
the  one  side,  and  Johnson,  who,  it  will  be  remembered, 
was  Cowper's  publisher,  on  the   other.     Phillips  was 
indignant  that,  having  first  brought  Sydney  into  fame, 
she  should  dare  to  ask  more  money  on  that  account. 
As  is  the  case  with  every  novelist  to-day  who  scores 
one  success.  Miss  Owenson  had  formed  a  good  idea  of 
her  value,   and  there  is  a  letter  to  Johnson  in  which 
she  admitted  that  Phillips's  offer  was  a  generous  one. 
Johnson  had  offered  her  £300  for  the  copyright  of  The 
Wild  Irish  Girl.     Phillips  had  offered  only  £200  down 
and    £50    each    for    the    second    and    third    editions. 
When   Phillips   heard    that   Johnson    had    outbidden 
him,  he  described  the  offer  as  '  monstrous,'  and  that  it 
was  '  inspired  by  a  spirit  of  revenge.'     He  would  not, 
he   declared,   increase   his   offer,  but  a  little  later  he 
writes  from  Bridge  Street  to  Sydney  Owenson  as  his 
'  dear,  bewitching,  and  deluding  Syren,'  and  promises 
the  £300.    A  few  months  later  he  gave  her  a  hundred 

*  Memoirs  of  Lady  Morgan,  edited  by  W.  Hepworth  Dixon. 


SIR  RICHARD  PHILLIPS  93 

pounds  for  a  slight  volume  of  poems,  which  certainly 
never  paid  for  its  publication,  although  Scott  and 
Moore  and  many  another  were  making  much  money 
out  of  poetry  in  those  days.  In  any  case  Phillips  did 
not  accept  Miss  Owenson's  next  story  with  alacrity, 
in  spite  of  the  undoubted  success  of  IVie  Wild  Irish 
Girl.  She  no  doubt  asked  too  much  for  Ida  of  Athens. 
Phillips  probably  thought,  after  reading  the  first  volume 
in  type,  that  it  was  very  inferior  work,  as  indeed  it  was. 
Athens  was  described  without  the  author  ever  having 
seen  the  city.  After  much  wrangling,  in  which  the 
lady  said  that  her  'prince  of  publishers,'  as  she  had 
once  called  him,  had  'treated  her  barbarously,'  the 
novel  went  into  the  hands  of  the  Longmans,  who 
published  it,  not  without  some  remonstrance  as  to 
certain  of  its  sentiments.  The  successful  Lady  Morgan 
afterwards  described  Ida  as  a  bad  book,  so  perhaps 
here,  as  usually,  Phillips  was  not  far  wrong  in  his 
judgment.  A  similar  quarrel  seems  to  have  taken 
place  over  the  next  novel.  Hie  3fissio7iary.  Here 
Phillips  again  received  the  manuscript,  discussed  terms 
with  its  author,  and  returned  it.  The  firm  of  Stock- 
dale  and  Miller  were  his  successful  rivals.  Later  and 
more  prosperous  novels,  O'Donnel  in  particular,  were 
issued  by  Henry  Colburn,  and  Phillips  now  disappears 
from  Lady  Morgan's  life.  I  have  told  the  story  of 
Phillips's  relation  with  Lady  Morgan  at  length  because 
at  no  other  point  do  we  come  into  so  near  a  contact 
with  him.  In  Fell's  Memoir  Phillips  is  described — in 
1808 — as  '  certainly  now  the  first  publisher  in  London,' 
but  while  he  may  have  been  this  in  the  volume  of  his 
trade — and  school-books  made  an  important  part  of  it 
— he  was  not  in  mere  '  names.'  Most  of  his  successful 
writers  —  Sydney    Owenson,   Thomas    Skinner    Surr, 


94     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Dr.  Gregory,  and  the  rest  —  have  now  fallen  into 
oblivion.  The  school-books  that  he  issued  have  lasted 
even  to  our  own  day,  notably  Dr.  Mavor's  Spelling 
Book.  Dr.  Mavor  was  a  Scotsman  from  Aberdeen, 
who  came  to  London  and  became  Phillips's  chief  hack. 
There  are  no  less  than  twenty  of  Mavor's  school-books 
in  the  catalogue  before  me.  They  include  Mavor's 
History  of  England,  Mavor's  Universal  History,  and 
Mavor's  History  of  Greece.  In  the  31emoir  of  1808 
it  is  claimed  that  '  Mavor '  is  but  a  pseudonym  for 
Phillips,  and  the  claim  is  also  made,  quite  wrongfully, 
by  John  Timbs,  who,  before  he  became  acting  editor  of 
the  Illustrated  London  Netvs  under  Herbert  Ingram, 
and  an  indefatigable  author,  was  Phillips's  private 
secretary.^  It  seems  clear,  however,  that  in  the  case  of 
Blair's  Catechism  and  Goldsmith's  Geography,  and 
many  another  book  for  schools,  Phillips  was  '  Blair ' 
and  '  Goldsmith '  and  many  another  imaginary  person, 
for  the  books  in  question  numbered  about  two  hundred 
in  all.  For  these  books  there  must  have  been  quite  an 
army  of  literary  hacks  employed  during  the  twenty 
years  prior  to  the  appearance  of  George  Borrow  in 
that  great  army.  On  9th  November  1807,  the  Lord 
Mayor's  procession  through  London  included  Richard 
Phillips  among  its  sheriffs,  and  he  was  knighted  by 
George  iii.  in  the  following  year.  During  his  period 
of  office  he  effected  many  reforms  in  the  City 
prisons.  John  Timbs,  in  his  Walks  and  Talks  about 
London,    tells    us    that    Phillips's    colleague    in    the 

^  See  Timbs's  article  on  Phillips  in  his  Walks  and  Talks  about  London, 
18G5.  Timbs  was  wont  to  recall^  as  the  late  W.  L.  Thomas  of  the  Graphic 
informed  me,  that  while  at  the  Illustrated  London  Newshe  got  so  exasperated 
with  Herbert  Ingram,  the  founder  and  proprietor,  that  he  would  frequently 
write  and  post  a  letter  of  resignation,  but  would  take  care  to  reach  the  office 
before  Ingram  in  the  morning  in  order  to  withdraw  it. 


SIR  RICHARD  PHILLIPS  95 

shrievalty    was    one    Smith,    who    afterwards    became 
Lord  Mayor : 

The  personnel  of  the  two  sheriffs  presented  a  sliarp  contrast. 
Smith  loved  aldermanic  cheer,  but  was  pale  and  cadaverous  in 
complexion ;  whilst  Phillips,  who  never  ate  animal  food,  was  rosy 
and  healthful  in  appearance.  One  day,  when  the  sheriffs  were  in 
full  state,  the  procession  was  stopped  by  an  obstruction  in  the 
street  traffic ;  when  droll  were  the  mistakes  of  the  mob  :  to  Smith 
they  cried,  '  Here's  Old  Water-gruel ! '  to  Phillips,  '  Here's  lloast 
Beef!  something  like  an  Englishman  ! ' 

Two  volumes  before  me  show  Phillips  as  the 
precursor  of  many  of  the  publishers  of  one-volume 
books  of  reference  so  plentiful  in  our  day.  A 
Million  of  Facts  is  one  of  them,  and  A  Chronology 
of  Public  Events  WitJiin  the  Last  Fifty  Years  from 
1771  to  1821  is  another,  while  one  of  the  earliest  and 
most  refreshing  guides  to  London  and  its  neighbour- 
hood is  afforded  us  in  A  Morning  Walk  from  London 
to  Kew,  which  first  appeared  in  JVie  Monthly  Magazine^ 
but  was  reprinted  in  1817  with  the  name  '  Sir  Richard 
Phillips  '  as  author  on  the  title-page.  Phillips  was  now 
no  longer  a  publisher.  Here  we  have  some  pleasant 
glimpses  of  a  bygone  era,  many  trite  reflections,  but 
not  enough  topography  to  make  the  book  one  of  per- 
manent interest.  It  would  not,  in  fact,  be  worth 
reprinting.^ 

This,  then,  was  the  man  to  whom  George  Borrow 
presented  himself  in  1824.  Phillips  was  fifty-seven 
years  of  age.  He  had  made  a  moderate  fortune  and 
lost  it,  and  was  now  enjoying  another  perhaps  less 
satisfying ;    it    included   the   profits   of    The  Monthly 

^  Another  Loudon  book  before  me,  which  bears  the  imprint  '  Richard 
Phillips,  Bridge  Street/  is  entitled  The  Picture  of  London  for  ISll.  Mine  is 
the  twelfth  edition  of  this  remarkable  little  volume. 


96     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Review,  repurchased  after  his  bankruptcy,  and  some 
rights  in  many  of  the  school-books.  But  the  great 
publishing  establishment  in  Bridge  Street  had  long 
been  broken  up.  Borrow  would  have  found  Taylor's 
introduction  to  Phillips  quite  useless  had  the  worthy 
knight  not  at  the  moment  been  keen  on  a  new  maga- 
zine and  seen  the  importance  of  a  fresh  '  hack '  to 
help  to  run  it.  Moreover,  had  he  not  written  a 
great  book  which  only  the  Germans  could  appreciate, 
Tivelve  Essays  on  the  Phenomena  of  Nature  ?  Here, 
he  thought,  was  the  very  man  to  produce  this  book 
in  a  German  dress.  Taylor  was  a  thorough  German 
scholar,  and  he  had  vouched  for  the  excellent  German 
of  his  pupil  and  friend.  Hence  a  certain  cordiality 
which  did  not  win  Borrow's  regard,  but  was  probably 
greater  than  many  a  young  man  would  receive  to-day 
from  a  publisher-prince  upon  whom  he  might  call 
laden  only  with  a  bundle  of  translations  from  the 
Danish  and  the  Welsh.  Here — in  Lavengro — is  the 
interview  between  publisher  and  poet,  with  the  editor's 
factotum  Bartlett,  whom  Borrow  calls  Taggart,  as 
witness : 

'  Well,  sir,  what  is  your  pleasure  ? '  said  the  big  man,  in  a 
rough  tone,  as  I  stood  there,  looking  at  him  wistfully — as  well 
I  might — for  upon  that  man,  at  the  time  of  which  I  am  speaking, 
my  principal,  I  may  say  my  only  hopes,  rested. 

'  Sir,'  said  I,  '  my  name  is  So-and-so,  and  I  am  the  bearer  of  a 
letter  to  you  from  Mr.  So-and-so,  an  old  friend  and  correspondent 
of  yours.' 

The  countenance  of  the  big  man  instantly  lost  the  suspicious 
and  lowering  expression  which  it  had  hitherto  exhibited ;  he 
strode  forward  and,  seizing  me  by  the  hand,  gave  me  a  violent 
squeeze. 

'My  dear  sir,'  said  he,  'I  am  rejoiced  to  see  you  in  London. 
I  have  been  long  anxious  for  the  pleasure — we  are  old  friends, 


Eincry  Walker 

SIR  JOHN  BOWRING  in  1826 

From  a   portrait   by   John    King 

now    in     the     National     Portrait 

Gallery. 


JOHN  P.  HASFELD  in  1835 

From   a  portrait   by  an   Unknown 

Artist  formerly  belonging  to  George 

Borrow. 


WILLIAM  TAYLOR 

From  a  portrait  by  J.  Thomson, 
jiainted  in  the  year  1821,  and  en- 
graved in  Robberds's  Life  of  Taylor. 


Emery  Walker 
SIR  RICHARD  PHILLIPS 

P"roni  a  portrait  by  James  Saxon, 

paintt'd     in     1828,     now     in     the 

National  Portrait  Gallery. 


FRIENDS  OF  BORROWS  E.A.RFY  YEARS 
96 


SIR  RICHARD  PHIMJPS  97 

though  we  have  never  before  met.  Taggart,'  said  he  to  the  man 
who  sat  at  the  desk,  '  this  is  our  excellent  correspondent,  the 
friend  and  pupil  of  our  excellent  correspondent.'' 

Phillips  explains  that  he  has  given  up  publishing,  ex- 
cept '  under  the  rose,'  had  onl)'^  The  MontJily  Magazijie, 
here^  called  The  Magazine,  but  contemplated  yet 
another  monthly,  The  Universal  Review,  here  called 
The  Oxford.  He  gave  Borrow  much  the  same  sound 
advice  that  a  publisher  would  have  given  him  to-day — 
that  poetry  is  not  a  marketable  commodity,  and  that  if 
you  want  to  succeed  in  prose  you  must,  as  a  rule, 
write  trash — the  most  acceptable  trash  of  that  day 
being  The  Dairymans  Daughter,^  which  has  sold  in 
hundreds  of  thousands,  and  is  still  much  prized  by 
the  Evangelical  folk  who  buy  the  publications  of  the 
Religious  Tract  Society.  Phillips,  moreover,  asked 
him  to  dine  to  meet  his  wife,  his  son,  and  his  son's 
wife,^  and  we  know  what  an  amusing  account  of  that 
dinner  Borrow  gives  in  Lavengro.  Moreover,  he  set 
Borrow  upon  his  first  piece  of  hack-work,  the  Cele- 
brated Trials,  and  gave  him  something  to  do  upon  The 
Universal  Review  and  also  upon  The  Monthly.  The 
Universal  lasted  only  for  six  numbers,  dying  in  Janu- 
ary 1825.  In  that  year  appeared  the  six  volumes  of 
the  Celebrated  Trials,  of  which  we  have  something  to 

*  In  Lavengro. 

"  Legh  Richmond  (1772-1827),  the  author  of  The  Dairyman's  Daughter  and 
The  Young  Cottager,  which  had  an  extraordinary  vogue  in  their  day.  A  few 
years  earlier  than  this  Princess  Sophia  Metstchersky  translated  the  former 
into  the  Russian  language,  and  Borrow  must  have  seen  copies  when  he  visited 
St.  Petersburg.  Richmond  was  the  first  clerical  secretary  of  the  Religious 
Tract  Society,  with  which  The  Dairyman  s  Daughter  has  always  been  one  of 
the  most  popular  of  tracts. 

3  Phillips  at  his  death  in  1 840  left  a  widow,  three  sons,  and  four  daughters. 
One  son  was  Vicar  of  Kilburn. 


98     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

say  in  our  next  chapter.  Borrow  found  Phillips  most 
exacting,  always  suggesting  the  names  of  new  criminals, 
and  leaving  it  to  the  much  sweated  author  to  find  the 
books  from  which  to  extract  the  necessary  material : 

In  the  compilation  of  my  Lives  and  Trials  I  was  exposed  to 
incredible  mortification,  and  ceaseless  trouble,  from  this  same  rage 
for  interference.  .   .  .  This  was  not  all ;  when  about  a  moiety  of 
the  first  volume  had  been  printed,  he  materially  altered  the  plan 
of  the  work ;  it  was  no  longer  to  be  a  collection  of  mere  Newgate 
lives  and  trials,  but  of  lives  and  trials  of  criminals  in  general, 
foreign  as  well  as  domestic.  .  .   .  '  Where  is  Brandt  and  Struen- 
see  ? '  cried  the  publisher.     '  I  am  sure  I  don't  know,'  I  replied  ; 
whereupon  the  publisher  falls  to  squealing  like  one  of  Joey's  rats. 
'  Find    me    up   Brandt   and    Struensee  by  next   morning,   or  — ' 
'  Have  you  found  Brandt  and  Struensee  ? '  cried  the  publisher,  on 
my  appearing  before  him  next  morning.     '  No,'  I  reply,  '  I  can 
hear  nothing  about    them ' ;    whereupon   the  publisher  falls  to 
bellowing  like  Joey's  bull.     By  dint  of  incredible  diligence,  I  at 
leno-th  discover  the  dingy  volume  containing  the  lives  and  trials 
of  the  celebrated  two  who  had  brooded  treason  dangerous  to  the 
state  of  Denmark.     I  purchase  the  dingy  volume,  and  bring  it  in 
triumph   to  the  publisher,   the    perspiration    running   down   my 
brow.      The  publisher  takes  the   dingy  volume  in  his  hand,  he 
examines  it  attentively,  then  puts  it  down ;    his  countenance  is 
calm  for  a  moment,  almost  benign.     Another  moment  and  there 
is  a  gleam  in  the  publisher's  sinister  eye  ;    he  snatches   up  the 
paper  containing  the  names  of  the  worthies  which  I  have  intended 
shall  figure  in  the  forthcoming  volumes — he  glances  rapidly  over 
it,  and  his  countenance  once  more  assumes  a  terrific  expression. 
'  How  is  this  ? '  he  exclaims  ;  '  I  can  scarcely  believe  my  eyes — 
the  most  important  life  and   trial  omitted   to  be  found  in  the 
whole    criminal    record — ^^what    gross,    what    utter    negligence ! 
Where's  the  life  of  Farmer  Patch  ?  where 's  the  trial  of  Yeoman 
Patch  ? ' 

'  What  a  life  !  what  a  dog's  life  ! '  I  would  frequently  exclaim, 
after  escaping  from  the  presence  of  the  publisher.^ 

^  Lavengro,  ch.  xxxix. 


SIR  RICHARD  PHILLIPS  99 

Then  came  the  final  catastrophe.  Borrow  could  not 
translate  Phillips's  great  masterpiece,  Twelve  Essays 
on  the  Proxhnate  Causes,  into  German  with  any  real 
efFectiv^eness  although  the  testimonial  of" the  enthusiastic 
Taylor  had  led  Phillips  to  assume  that  he  could.  Borrow, 
as  we  shall  see,  knew  many  languages,  and  knew  them 
well  colloquially,  but  he  was  not  a  grammarian,  and  he 
could  not  write  accurately  in  any  one  of  his  numerous 
tongues.  His  wonderful  memory  gave  him  the  words, 
but  not  always  any  thoroughness  of  construction.  He 
could  make  a  good  translation  of  a  poem  by  Schiller, 
because  he  brought  his  own  poetic  fancy  to  the  venture, 
but  he  had  no  interest  in  Phillips's  philosophy,  and  so 
he  doubtless  made  a  very  bad  translation,  as  German 
friends  were  soon  able  to  assure  Phillips,  who  had  at 
last  to  go  to  a  German  for  a  translation,  and  the  book 
appeared  at  Stuttgart  in  1826.^  Meanwhile,  Phillips's 
new  magazine,  21ie  Universal  Review,  went  on  its 
course.  It  lasted  only  for  a  few  numbers,  as  we  have 
said — from  March  1824  to  January  1825 — and  it  was 
entirely  devoted  to  reviews,  many  of  them  written  by 
Borrow,  but  without  any  distinction  calling  for  com- 
ment to-day.  Dr.  Knapp  thought  that  Gilford  was  the 
editor,  with  Phillips's  son  and  George  Borrow  assisting. 
Gilford  translated  Juvenal,  and  it  was  for  a  long  time 
assumed  that  Borrow  wished  merely  to  disguise 
Gilford's  identity  when  he  referred  to  his  editor  as 
the  translator  of  Qimitilian.  But  Sir  Leslie  Stephen 
has  pointed  out  in  Literatnre  that  John  Carey 
(1756-1826),  who  actually  edited  Quintilian  in  1822, 
was   Phillips's  editor,     '  All  the   poetry  which    I    re- 

1  Ueber  die  ndchsten  Ursachen  der  materiellen  Erscheinungen  des  Universums , 
von  Sir  Richard  Phillips,  nach  dem  Englischen  hearheitet  von  General  von 
Theobald  und  Prof.  Dr.  Lebret.     Stuttgart,  1826. 


100    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

viewed,'  Borrow  tells  us,  '  appeared  to  be  published  at 
the  expense  of  the  authors.  All  the  publications  which 
fell  under  my  notice  I  treated  in  a  gentlemanly  .  .  . 
manner — no  personalities,  no  vituperation,  no  shabby 
insinuations ;  decorum,  decorum  was  the  order  of  the 
day.'  And  one  feels  that  Borrow  was  not  very  much 
at  home.  But  he  went  on  with  his  Newgate  Lives  and 
IVials,  which,  however,  were  to  be  published  with 
another  imprint,  although  at  the  instance  of  Phillips. 
By  that  time  he  and  that  worthy  publisher  had  parted 
company.  Probably  Phillips  had  set  out  for  Brighton, 
which  was  to  be  his  home  for  the  remainder  of  his  life. 


CHAPTER     X 

FAUSTUS  AND  ROMANTIC  BALLADS 

In  the  early  pages  of  Lavengro  Borrow  tells  us  nearly 
all  we  are  ever  likely  to  know  of  his  sojourn  in  London 
in  the  years  1824  and  1825,  during  which  time  he  had 
those  interviews  with  Sir  Richard  Phillips  which  are 
recorded  in  our  last  chapter.  Dr.  Knapp,  indeed, 
prints  a  little  note  from  him  to  his  friend  Kerrison,  in 
which  he  begs  his  friend  to  come  to  him  as  he  believes 
he  is  dying.  Roger  Kerrison,  it  would  seem,  had  been 
so  frightened  by  Borrow's  depression  and  threats  of 
suicide  that  he  had  left  the  lodgings  at  16  Milman 
Street,  Bedford  Row,  and  removed  himself  elsewhere, 
and  so  Borrow  was  left  friendless  to  fight  what  he 
called  his  *  horrors '  alone.  The  depression  was  not 
unnatural.  From  his  own  vivid  narrative  we  learn  of 
Borrow's  bitter  failure  as  an  author.  No  one  wanted 
his  translations  from  the  Welsh  and  the  Danish,  and 
Phillips  clearly  had  no  further  use  for  him  after  he 
had  compiled  his  Newgate  Lives  aiid  Trials  (Borrow  s 
name  in  Lavengro  for  Celebrated  Trials),  and  was 
doubtless  inclined  to  look  upon  him  as  an  impostor  for 
professing,  with  William  Taylor's  sanction,  a  mastery 
of  the  German  language  which  had  been  demonstrated 
to  be  false  with  regard  to  his  own  book.  No  '  spirited 
publisher'  had  come  forward  to  give  reality  to  his 
dream  thus  set  down  : 

101 


102    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

I  had  still  an  idea  that,  provided  I  could  persuade  any  spirited 
publisher  to  give  these  translations  to  the  world,  I  should  acquire 
both  considerable  fame  and  profit ;  not,  perhaps,  a  world -embrac- 
ing fame  such  as  Byron's  ;  but  a  fame  not  to  be  sneered  at,  which 
would  last  me  a  considerable  time,  and  would  keep  my  heart  from 
breaking  ; — profit,  not  equal  to  that  which  Scott  had  made  by 
his  wondrous  novels,  but  which  would  prevent  me  from  starving, 
and  enable  me  to  achieve  some  other  literary  enterprise.  I  read 
and  re-read  my  ballads,  and  the  more  I  read  them  the  more  I  was 
convinced  that  the  public,  in  the  event  of  their  being  published, 
would  freely  purchase,  and  hail  them  with  the  merited  applause. 

He  has  a  tale  to  tell  us  in  Lavengro  of  a  certain  L,ifc 
and  Adventures  of  Joseph  Sell,  the  Great  Travelle?% 
the  purchase  of  which  from  him  by  a  publisher  at  the 
last  moment  saved  him  from  starvation  and  enabled 
him  to  take  to  the   road,  there   to   meet   the   many 
adventures  that  have  become  immortal  in  the  pages  of 
Lavengro.     Dr.  Knapp  has  encouraged  the  idea  that 
Joseph  Sell  was  a  real    book,  ignoring  the  fact   that 
the    very   title    suggests    doubts,   and    was    probably 
meant   to   suggest   them.      In  Norfolk,  as  elsewhere, 
a  '  sell '  is   a  word  in  current  slang  used  for  an  im- 
posture or  a  cheat,  and  doubtless  Borrow  meant  to 
make  merry  with  the  credulous.     There  was,  we  may 
be  perfectly  sure,  no  Joseph  Sell,  and  it  is  more  reason- 
able to  suppose  that  it  was  the  sale  of  his  translation  of 
Klinger's  Faiistus  that   gave   him    the  much   needed 
money  at  this  crisis.     Dr.  Knapp  pictures  Borrow  as 
carrying  the  manuscript  of  his  translation  of  Faiistus 
with   him   to    London.       There    is   not   the   slightest 
evidence  of  this.     It  may  be  reasonably  assumed  that 
Borrow   made   the    translation   from    Klinger's   novel 
during   his    sojourn   in  London.     It  is  true  the  pre- 
face is  dated  'Norwich,  April  1825,'  but  Borrow  did 
not  leave  London  until  the  end  of  May  1825,  that  is  to 


FAUSTUS'  103 

say,  until  after  he  had  negotiated  with  '  VV.  Sinipkin 
and  R.  Marshall,'  now  the  well-known  firm  of  Sinipkin 
and  Marshall,  for  the  publication  of  the  little  volume. 
That  firm,  unfortunately,  has  no  record  of  the  trans- 
action. My  impression  is  that  Borrow  in  his  wandering 
after  old  volumes  on  crime  for  his  great  compilation, 
Celebi^ated  Trials,  came  across  the  French  translation 
of  Klinger's  novel  published  at  Amsterdam.  From 
that  translation  he  acknowledges  that  he  borrowed  the 
plate  which  serves  as  frontispiece — a  plate  entitled 
'  The  Corporation  Feast.'  It  represents  the  corpora- 
tion of  Frankfort  at  a  banquet  turned  by  the  devil 
into  various  animals.  It  has  been  erroneously  assumed 
that  Borrow  had  had  something  to  do  with  the  de- 
signing of  this  plate,  and  that  he  had  introduced  the 
corporation  of  Norwich  in  vivid  portraiture  into  the 
picture.  Borrow  does,  indeed,  interpolate  a  reference 
to  Norwich  into  his  translation  of  a  not  too  compli- 
mentary character,  for  at  that  time  he  had  no  very 
amiable  feelings  towards  his  native  city.  Of  the 
inhabitants  of  Frankfort  he  says  : 

They  found  the  people  of  the  place  modelled  after  so  unsightly 
a  pattern,  with  such  ugly  figures  and  flat  features,  that  the  devil 
owned  he  had  never  seen  them  equalled,  except  by  the  inhabitants 
of  an  English  town  called  Norwich,  when  dressed  in  their  Sunday's 
best.i 

In  the  original  German  version  of  1791  we  have  the 
town  of  Nuremberg  thus  satirised.  But  Borrow  was 
not  the  first  translator  to  seize  the  opportunity  of 
adapting  the  reference  for  personal  ends.  In  the 
French  translation  of  1798,  published  at  Amsterdam, 
and   entitled   Les  Aventu7^es   du  Dodeui^  Faust,  the 

*  Life  and  Death  of  Faustus,  p.  69. 


104    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

translator  has  substituted  Auxerre  for  Nuremberg. 
What  makes  me  think  that  Borrow  used  only  the 
French  version  in  his  translation  is  the  fact  that  in  his 
preface  he  refers  to  the  engravings  of  that  version,  one 
of  which  he  reproduced  ;  whereas  the  engravings  are  in 
the  German  version  as  well. 

Friedrich  Maximilian  von  Klinger  (1752-1831),  who 
was  responsible  for  Borrow's  '  first  book,'  was  respon- 
sible for  much  else  of  an  epoch-making  character.     It 
was   he  who    by  one  of  his   many  plays,  Sturm   und 
JDrang,  gave  a  name  to  an  important  period  of  German 
Literature.     In  1780  von  Klinger  entered  the  service  of 
Russia,  and  in  1790  married  a  natural  daughter  of  the 
Empress   Catherine.    Thus   his   novel,   Fausfs  Leben, 
Thaten  und  HoUenfahrt,  was  actually  first  published  at 
St.    Petersburg   in    1791.     This   was   seventeen   years 
before  Goethe  published  his  first  part  of  Faust,  a  book 
which  by  its  exquisite  poetry  was  to  extinguish  for 
all    self-respecting    Germans    Khnger's    turgid    prose. 
Borrow,  like  the  translator  of  Rousseau's  Confessions 
and  of  many  another  classic,  takes  refuge  more  than 
once  in  the   asterisk.     Klinger's  Faustus,  with  much 
that  was  bad  and  even  bestial,  has  merits.     The  devil 
throughout  shows  his  victim  a  succession  of  examples 
of  '  man's  inhumanity  to  man.'     Borrow's  translation 
of  Khnger's  novel  was  reprinted  in  1864  without  any 
acknowledgment  of  the  name  of  the  translator,  and 
only  a  few  stray   words   being  altered.^     Borrow  no- 

^  Faustus :  His  Life,  Death,  and  Doom:  a  Romance  in  Prose,  translated  from 
the  German.  London:  W.  Kent  and  Co.,  Paternoster  Row,  1864.  Borrow's 
Life  and  Death  of  Faustus  was  reprinted  in  1840;,  again  with  Simpkin's  imprint. 
Collating  Borrow's  translation  with  the  issue  of  18G4,  I  find  that,  with  a  few 
trivial  verbal  alterations^  they  are  identical — that  is  to  say,  the  trans- 
lator of  the  book  of  1864  did  not  translate  at  all,  but  copied  from  Borrow's 
version  of  Faustus,  copying   even  his   errors  in  translation.     There  is  no 


'FAUSTUS'  105 

where  mentions  Klinger's  name  in  his  latter  volume, 
of  which  the  title-page  runs  : 

Faustus  :  His  Life,  Death,  and  Descent  into  Hell.  Translated 
from  the  German.     London  :  W.  Simpkin  and  R.  Marshall,  1825. 

I  douht  very  much  if  he  really  knew  who  was  the 
author,  as  the  book  in  both  the  German  editions  I  have 
seen  as  well  as  in  the  French  version  bears  no  author's 
name  on  its  title-page.  A  letter  of  Borrow's  in  the 
possession  of  an  American  collector  indicates  that  he 
was  back  in  Norwich  in  September  1825,  after,  we  may 
assume,  three  months'  wandering  among  gypsies  and 
tinkers.  It  is  written  from  Willow  Lane,  and  is  appar- 
ently to  the  publishers  of  Faustus : 

As  your  bill  will  become  payable  in  a  few  days,  I  am  willing 
to  take  thirty  copies  of  Faustus  instead  of  the  money.  The  book 
has  been  burnt  in  both  the  libraries  here,  and,  as  it  has  heen  talked 
about,  I  may  perhaps  be  able  to  dispose  of  some  in  the  course  of  a 
year  or  so. 

This  letter  clearly  demonstrates  that  the  guileless 
Simpkin  and  the  equally  guileless  JNlarshall  had  paid 
Borrow  for  the  right  to  publish  Faustus,  and  even 
though  part  of  the  payment  was  met  by  a  bill,  I  think 
we  may  safely  find  in  the  transaction  whatever  verity 
there  may  be  in  the  Joseph  Sell  episode.  *  Let  me 
know  how  you  sold  your  manuscript,'  writes  Borrow's 
brother  to  him  so  late  as  the  year  1829.  And  this  was 
doubtless  Faustus.  The  action  of  the  Norwich  libraries 
in  burning  the  book  would  clearly  have  had  the  sympathy 
of  one  of  its  few  reviewers  had  he  been  informed  of  the 

reason  to  suppose  that  the  individual^  whoever  he  may  have  been,  who  pre- 
pared the  1864  edition  of  Faustus  for  the  Press,  had  ever  seen  either  the 
German  original  or  the  French  translation  of  Klinger's  book.  It  is  clear 
that  he  '  conveyed '  Borrow's  translation  almost  in  its  entirety. 


106    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

circumstance.     It  is  thus  that  the  Literary  Gazette  for 
16th  July  1825  refers  to  Borrow's  little  book: 

This  is  another  work  to  which  no  respectable  pubhsher  ought 
to  have  allowed  his  name  to  be  put.  The  political  allusions  and 
metaphysics,  which  may  have  made  it  popular  among  a  low  class 
in  Germany,  do  not  sufficiently  season  its  lewd  scenes  and  coarse 
descriptions  for  British  palates.  We  have  occasionally  publica- 
tions for  the  fireside — these  are  only  fit  for  the  fire. 

Borrow  returned  then  to  Norwich  in  the  autumn 

of   1825  a  disappointed   man  so  far  as  concerned  the 

giving  of  his  poetical  translations  to  the  world,  from 

which  he  had  hoped  so  much.     No  '  spirited  publisher ' 

had  been  forthcoming,  although  Dr.  Knapp's  researches 

have  unearthed   a  '  note '  in   The  Monthly  Magazine, 

which,  after   the    fashion  of  the  anticipatory   literary 

gossip  of  our  day,  announced  that  Olaus  Borrow  was 

about  to  issue  Legends  and  Popular  Siqjer^stitions  of 

the  North,  'in  two  elegant  volumes.'     But  this  never 

appeared.     Quite   a   number  of  Borrow's  translations 

from  divers  languages  had  appeared  from  time  to  time, 

beginning  with  a  version  of  Schiller's  '  Diver '  in  IVie 

New   Monthly   Magazine   for    1823,    continuing   with 

Stolberg's  '  Ode  to  a  Mountain  Torrent '  in  The  3Ionthly 

Magazine,   and    including    the    '  Deceived    Merman.' 

These  he  collected  into  book  form  and,  not  to  be  deterred 

by  the  coldness  of  heartless  London  publishers,  issued 

them  by  subscription.     Three  copies  of  the  slim  octavo 

book  lie  before  me,  with  separate  title-pages : 

(1)  Romantic  Ballads,  Translated  from  the  Danish;  and  Mis- 
cellaneous Pieces  by  George  Borrow,  Norwich :  Printed  and 
Published  by  S.  Wilkin,  Upper  Haymarket,  1826. 

(2)  Romantic  Ballads,  Translated  from  the  Danish;  and  Miscel- 
laneous Pieces  by  George  Borrow.  London  :  Published  by  John 
Taylor,  Waterloo  Place,  Pall  Mall,  1826. 


'ROMANTIC  BALLADS'  107 

(3)  llomaiitic  Ballads,  Translated  from  tlie  Danish  ;  and  Mis- 
cellaneous Pieces,  by  George  Borrow.  London  :  Published  by 
Wightman  and  Cramp,  24  Paternoster  Row,  1826.^ 

The  book  contains  an  introduction  in  verse  by  Allan 
Cunningham,  whose  acquaintance  Boriow  seems  to 
have  made  in  London.     It  commences  : 

Sing,  sing,  my  friend,  breathe  life  again 
Through  Norway's  song  and  Denmark's  strain  : 
On  flowing  Thames  and  Forth,  in  flood, 
Pour  Haco's  war-song,  fierce  and  rude. 

Cunningham  had  not  himself  climbed  very  far  up  the 
literary  ladder  in  1825,  although  he  was  forty-one  years 
of  age.  At  one  time  a  stonemason  in  a  Scots  village, 
he  had  entered  Chantrey's  studio,  and  was  '  superin- 
tendent of  the  works '  to  that  eminent  sculptor  at  the 
time  when  Borrow  called  upon  him  in  London,  and 
made  an  acquaintance  which  never  seems  to  have 
extended  beyond  this  courtesy  to  the  younger  man's 
Danish  Ballads.  The  point  of  sympathy  of  course  was 
that  in  the  year  1825  Cunningham  had  published  The 
Songs  of  Scotland,  Ancient  and  3Ioder7i.  But  Allan 
Cunningham,  whose  Lives  of  the  3Iost  Eminent  British 
Pai7iters  is  his  best  remembered  book  to-day,  scarcely 
comes  into  this  story.  There  are  four  letters  from 
Cunningham  to  Borrow  in  Dr.  Knapp's  Life,  and  two 
from  Borrow  to  Cunningham.  The  latter  gave  his 
young  friend  much  good  advice.  He  told  him,  for 
example,  to  send  copies  of  his  book  to  the  newspapers 
— to  the  Litei^ary  Gazette  in  particular,  and  '  Walter 

*  Allan  Cumiiugham,  in  a  letter  to  Borrow,  says,  'Taylor  will  undertake 
to  publish.'  But  there  must  have  been  a  change  afterwards,  for  some  of  the 
London  copies  bear  the  imprint  Wightman  and  Cramp.  In  1913  Jarrold  and 
Sons  of  Norwich  issued  a  reprint  of  Romantic  Ballads  limited  to  300  copies, 
with  facsimiles  of  the  manuscript  from  my  Borrow  Papers. 


108    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Scott  must  not  be  forgotten.'  Dr.  Knapp  thinks  that 
the  newspapers  were  forgotten,  and  that  Borrow 
neglected  to  send  to  them.  In  any  case  not  a  single 
review  appeared.  But  it  is  not  exactly  true  that 
Borrow  ignored  the  usual  practice  of  authors  so  en- 
tirely as  Dr.  Knapp  supposes.  There  is  a  letter  to 
Borrow  among  my  Borrow  Papers  from  Francis  Pal- 
grave  the  historian,  who  became  Sir  Francis  Palgrave 
seven  years  later,  which  throws  some  light  upon  the 
subject : 

To  George  Borrow 

Parliament  St.,  17  June  1826. 
My  dear  Sir, — I  am  very  much  obliged  to  you  for  the  oppor- 
tunity that  you  have  afforded  me  of  perusing  your  spirited  and 
faithful  translating  of  the  Danish  ballads.  Mr.  Allan  Cunning- 
ham, who,  as  you  will  know,  is  an  ancient  minstrel  himself,  says 
that  they  are  more  true  to  the  originals  and  more  truly  poetical 
than  any  that  he  has  yet  seen.  I  have  delivered  one  copy  to  Mr. 
Lockhart,  the  new  editor  of  the  Quarterly  Review^  and  I  hope  he 
will  notice  it  as  it  deserves.  Murray  would  probably  be  inclined 
to  publish  your  translations. — I  remain,  dear  sir,  your  obedient 
and  faithful  servant,  Francis  Palgrave. 

It  is  probable  that  he  did  also  send  a  copy  to  Scott, 
and  it  is  Dr.  Knapp 's  theory  that  *  that  busy  writer  forgot 
to  acknowledge  the  courtesy.'  It  may  be  that  this  is 
so.  It  has  been  the  source  of  many  a  literary  prejudice. 
Carlyle  had  a  bitterness  in  his  heart  against  Scott  for 
much  the  same  cause.  Rarely  indeed  can  the  strug- 
gling author  endure  to  be  ignored  by  the  radiantly 
successful  one.  It  must  have  been  the  more  galling  in 
that  a  few  years  earlier  Scott  had  been  lifted  by  the 
ballad  from  obscurity  to  fame.  Borrow  did  not  in  any 
case  lack  encouragement  from  Allan  Cunningham :  '  I 
like  your  Danish  ballads  much,*  he  writes.     *  Get  out  of 


ROMANTIC  BATXADS'  109 

bed,  George  Borrow,  and  be  sick  or  sleepy  no  longer. 
A  fellow  who  can  give  us  such  exquisite  Danish 
ballads  has  no  right  to  repose.'^  Borrow,  on  his  side, 
thanks  Cunningham  for  his  '  noble  lines,'  and  tells  him 
that  he  has  got  *half  of  his  Songs  of  Scotland  by 
heart.' 

Five  hundred  copies  of  the  Romantic  Ballads  were 
printed  in  Norwich  by  S.  Wilkin,  about  two  hundred 
being  subscribed  for,  mainly  in  that  city,  the  other 
three  hundred  being  dispatched  to  London — to  Taylor, 
whose  name  appears  on  the  London  title-page,  although 
he  seems  to  have  passed  on  the  book  very  quickly  to 
Wightman  and  Cramp,  for  what  reason  we  are  not 
informed.  Borrow  tells  us  that  the  two  hundred 
subscriptions  of  half  a  guinea  '  amply  paid  expenses,' 
but  he  must  have  been  cruelly  disappointed,  as  he 
was  doomed  to  be  more  than  once  in  his  career,  by 
the  lack  of  public  appreciation  outside  of  NorAvich. 
Yet  there  were  many  reasons  for  this.  If  Scott  had 
made  the  ballad  popular,  he  had  also  destroyed  it  for  a 
century — perhaps  for  ever — by  substituting  the  novel  as 
the  favourite  medium  for  the  storyteller.  Great  ballads 
we  were  to  have  in  every  decade  from  that  day  to  this, 
but  never  another  'best  seller'  like  Marmion  or  The 
Lady  of  the  Lake.  Our  popula?^  poets  had  to  express 
themselves  in  other  ways.  Then  Borrow,  although  his 
verse  has  been  underrated  by  those  who  have  not  seen 
it  at  its  best,  or  who  are  incompetent  to  appraise  poetry, 
was  not  very  effective  here,  notwithstanding  that  the 
stories  in  verse  in  Romantic  Ballads  are  all  entirely 
interesting.  This  fact  is  most  in  evidence  in  a  case 
where  a  real  poet,  not  of  the  greatest,  has  told  the  same 
story.     We  owe  a  rendering  of  '  The  Deceived  Merman ' 

^   Knapp's  Life,  vol.  i.  117. 


no    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HTS  CIRCLE 

to  both  George  Borrow  and  Matthew  Arnold,  but  how 
widely  different  the  treatment!  The  story  is  of  a 
merman  who  rose  out  of  the  water  and  enticed  a  mortal 
— fair  Agnes  or  Margaret — under  the  waves  ;  she 
becomes  his  wife,  bears  him  children,  and  then  asks  to 
return  to  earth.  Arriving  there  she  refuses  to  go  back 
when  the  merman  comes  disconsolately  to  the  church- 
door  for  her.  Here  are  a  few  lines  from  the  two 
versions,  which  demonstrate  that  here  at  least  Borrow 
was  no  poet  and  that  Arnold  was  a  very  fine  one : 

GEORGE  BORROVr  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

'  Now,  Agnes,  A2:nes  list  to  me,  We   climbed   on  the  graves,  on  the 

Thy  babes  are  longing  so  after  thee.'         stones  worn  with  rains, 

'  I   cannot   come   yet,    here  must   I  And  we  gazed  up  the  aisles  through 

stay  the  small  leaded  panes. 

Until  the  priest  shall  have  said  his  She  sate  by  the  pillar;    we  saw  her 

say.'  clear : 

And  when  the   priest  had  said  his  'Margaret,  hist!  come  quick  we  are 

say,  here  ! 

She  thought  with  her  mother  at  home  Dear  heart,'  I  said,  'we  are  long  alone; 

she  'd  stay.  The  sea  grows  stormy,  the  little  ones 
'  O  Agnes,  Agnes  list  to  me,  moan.' 

Thy  babes  are  sorrowing  after  thee.'  But,  ah,  she  gave  me  never  a  look, 

'  Let  them  sorrow  and  sorrow  their  For  her  eyes  were  sealed  on  the  holy 

fill,  book  !  " 

But   back  to  them   never  return   I  Loud   prays  the  priest ;   shut  stands 

will.'  the  door. 

Come  away,  children,  call  no  more  ! 
Come  away,  come  down,  call  no  more  ! 

It  says  much  for  the  literary  proclivities  of  Norwich 
at  this  period  that  Borrow  should  have  had  so  kindly  a 
reception  for  his  book  as  the  subscription  list  implies. 
At  the  end  of  each  of  Wilkin's  two  hundred  copies  a 
'list  of  subscribers'  is  given.  It  opens  with  the  name 
of  the  Bishop  of  Norwich,  Dr.  Bathurst ;  it  includes 
the  equally  familiar  names  of  the  Gurdons,  Gurneys, 
Harveys,    Rackhams,    Hares    (then   as   now   of  Stow 


*  ROMANTIC  BALLADS'  HI 

Hall),  Woodliouses — all  good  Norfolk  or  Norwich 
names  that  have  come  down  to  our  time.  Mayor 
Hawkes,  who  is  made  famous  in  Lavengro  by  Haydon's 
portrait,  is  there  also.  Among  London  names  we  find 
'  F.  Arden,'  which  recalls  his  friend  'Francis  Ardry'  in 
Lavengro,  John  Bowring,  Borrow 's  new  friend,  and  later 
to  be  counted  an  enemy,  Thomas  Campbell,  Benjamin 
Haydon,  and  John  Timbs.  But  the  name  that  most 
strikes  the  eye  is  that  of  '  Thurtell.'  Three  of  the  family 
are  among  the  subscribers,  including  Mr.  George 
Thurtell  of  Eaton,  near  Norwich,  brother  of  the 
murderer ;  there  also  is  the  name  of  John  Thurtell, 
executed  for  murder  exactly  a  year  before.  This  would 
seem  to  imply  that  Borrow  had  been  a  long  time 
collecting  these  names  and  subscriptions,  and  doubtless 
before  the  all-too-famous  crime  of  the  previous  year  he 
had  made  Thurtell  promise  to  become  a  subscriber,  and, 
let  us  hope,  had  secured  his  half-guinea.  That  may 
account,  with  so  sensitive  and  impressionable  a  man  as 
our  author,  for  the  kindly  place  that  Weare's  imhappy 
murderer  always  had  in  his  memory.  Borrow,  in  any 
case,  was  now,  for  a  few  years,  to  become  more  than 
ever  a  vagabond.  Not  a  single  further  appeal  did  he 
make  to  an  unsympathetic  literary  public  for  a  period 
of  five  years  at  least. 


CHAPTER    XI 

CELEBRATED  TRIALS  AND  JOHN  THURTELL 

BoRROw's  first  book  was  Faustus,  and  his  second  was 
Romantic  Ballads,  the  one  being  pubHshed,  as  we  have 
seen,  in  1825,  the  other  in  1826.  This  chronology  has 
the  appearance  of  ignoring  the  Celebrated  Trials,  but 
then  it  is  scarcely  possible  to  count  Celebrated  Trials  ^ 
as  one  of  Sorrow's  books  at  all.  It  is  largely  a  compila- 
tion, exactly  as  the  Newgate  Calendar  and  Howell's 
State  Trials  are  compilations.  In  his  preface  to  the 
work  Borrow  tells  us  that  he  has  differentiated  the  book 
from  the  Newgate  Calendar  ^  and  the  State  Trials  ^  by 
the  fact  that  he  had  made  considerable  compression. 
This  was  so,  and  in  fact  in  many  cases  he  has  used  the 
blue  pencil  rather  than  the  pen — at  least  in  the  earlier 
volumes.  But  Borrow  attempted  something  much 
more  comprehensive  than  the  Newgate  Calendar  and 
the  State  Trials  in  his  book.  In  the  former  work  the 
trials  ranofe  from  1700  to  1802;  in  the  latter  from  the 

1  Celebrated  Trials  and  Remarkable  Cases  of  Criminal  Jurisprudence  from 
the  Earliest  Records  to  the  Year  1825.  In  six  volumes.  London  :  Printed  for 
Geo.  Knight  &  Lacey,  Paternoster  Row,  1825.      Price  £3,  12s.  in  boards. 

2  The  New  and  Complete  Newgate  Calendar  or  Malefactors  Recording  Register. 
By  William  Jackson.      Six  vols.     1802. 

3  Cobbett  and  Howell's  State  Trials.  In  thirty-three  volumes  and  index, 
1809  to  1828.  The  last  volume,  apart  from  the  index,  was  actually  published 
the  year  after  Borrow's  Celebrated  Trials,  that  is,  in  1826  ;  but  the  last  trial 
recorded  was  that  of  Thistlewood  in  1820.  The  editors  were  AV^illiam 
Cobbett,  Thomas  Bayly  Howell,  and  his  son,  Thomas  Jones  Howell. 

112 


'CELEBRATED  TIUALS '  113 

trial  of  Becket  in  1163  to  the  trial  of  Thistle  wood  in 
1820.  Both  works  are  concerned  solely  with  this 
country.  Borrow  went  all  over  Europe,  and  the  trials 
of  Joan  of  Arc,  Count  Struensee,  Major  Andre, 
Count  Cagliostro,  Queen  Marie  Antoinette,  the  Due 
d'Enghien,  and  Marshal  Ney,  are  included  in  his 
volumes.  Moreover,  while  what  may  be  called  state 
trials  are  numerous,  including  many  of  the  cases  in 
Howell,  the  greater  number  are  of  a  domestic  nature, 
including  nearly  all  tliat  are  given  in  the  Newgate 
Caleiidar.  In  the  first  two  volumes  he  has  naturally 
mainly  state  trials  to  record  ;  the  later  volumes  record 
sordid  everyday  crimes,  and  here  Borrow  is  more  at 
home.  His  style  when  he  rewrites  the  trials  is  more 
vigorous,  and  his  narrative  more  interesting.  It  is  to 
be  hoped  that  the  exigent  publisher,  who  he  assures 
us  made  him  buy  the  books  for  his  compilation  out  of 
the  £50  that  he  paid  for  it,  was  able  to  present  him 
with  a  set  of  the  State  Trials,  if  only  in  one  of  the 
earlier  and  cheaper  issues  of  the  work  than  the  one  that 
now  has  a  place  in  every  lawyer's  library/ 

The  third  volume  of  Celebrated  Trials,  althougli  it 
opens  with  the  trial  of  Algernon  Sidney,  is  made  up 
largely  of  crime  of  the  more  ordinary  type,  and  this 
sordid  note  continues  through  the  three  final  volumes. 

1  The  following  note  appeared  in  The  Monthly  Magazine  for  1st  July 
1824  (vol.  Ivii.  p.  557)  : 

'  A  Selection  of  the  most  remarkable  Trials  and  Criminal  Causes  is  printing 
in  five  volumes.  It  will  include  all  famous  cases,  from  that  of  Lord  Cobham, 
in  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Fifth,  to  that  of  John  Thurtell ;  and  those 
connected  with  foreign  as  well  as  English  jurisprudence.  Mr.  Borrow,  the 
editor,  has  availed  himself  of  all  the  resources  of  the  English,  German, 
French,  and  Italian  languages  ;  and  his  work,  including  from  150  to 
200  of  the  most  interesting  cases  on  record,  will  appear  in  October  next. 
The  editor  of  the  preceding  has  ready  for  the  press  a  Life  of  Faustus,  his 
Death,  and  Descent  into  Hell,  which  will  also  appear  early  in  the  next  winter.' 

H 


114    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

I  have  said  that  Faustus  is  an  allegory  of  '  man's 
inhumanity  to  man.'  That  is  emphatically,  in  more 
realistic  form,  the  distinguishing  feature  of  Celebrated 
Trials.  Amid  these  records  of  savagery,  it  is  a  positive 
relief  to  come  across  such  a  trial  as  that  of  poor  Joseph 
Baretti.  Baretti,  it  will  be  remembered,  w^as  brought 
to  trial  because,  when  some  roughs  set  upon  him  in 
the  street,  he  drew  a  dagger,  which  he  usually  carried 
'  to  carve  fruit  and  sweetmeats,'  and  killed  his  assailant. 
In  that  age,  when  our  law  courts  were  a  veritable 
shambles,  how  cheerful  it  is  to  find  that  the  jury 
returned  a  verdict  of  '  self-defence.'  But  then  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds,  Edmund  Burke,  Dr.  Johnson,  and 
David  Garrick  gave  evidence  to  character,  representing 
Baretti  as  '  a  man  of  benevolence,  sobriety,  modesty,  and 
learning.'  This  trial  is  an  oasis  of  mercy  in  a  desert 
of  drastic  punishment.  Borrow  carries  on  his  '  trials  ' 
to  the  very  year  before  the  date  of  publication,  and 
the  last  trial  in  the  book  is  that  of  '  Henry  Faun- 
tleroy,  Esquire,'  for  forgery.  Fauntleroy  was  a  quite 
respectable  banker  of  unimpeachable  character,  to  whom 
had  fallen  at  a  very  early  age  the  charge  of  a  banking 
business  that  was  fundamentally  unsound.  It  is  clear 
that  he  had  honestly  endeavoured  to  put  things  on  a 
better  footing,  that  he  lived  simply,  and  had  no  gam- 
bling or  other  vices.  At  a  crisis,  however,  he  forged  a 
document,  in  other  words  signed  a  transfer  of  stock 
which  he  had  no  right  to  do,  the  '  subscribing  witness ' 
to  his  power  of  attorney  being  Robert  Browning,  a  clerk 
in  the  Bank  of  England,  and  father  of  the  distinguished 
poet.^  Well,  Fauntleroy  was  sentenced  to  be  hanged 
— and  he  was  duly  hanged  at  Newgate  on  30th  October 

1  Did  the  poet,  who  had  an  interest  in  criminology,  know  of  his  father's 
quite  innocent  association  with  the  Fauntleroy  trial .'' 


'CELEBRATED  TRIALS'  115 

1824,  only  thirteen  years  before  Queen  Victoria  came 
to  the  throne ! 

Borrow  has  affirmed  that  from  a  study  of  the 
Nexvgatc  Calenda?-  and  the  compilation  of  his  Cele- 
brated Trials  he  first  learned  to  write  genuine  English, 
and  it  is  a  fact  that  there  are  some  remarkably  dramatic 
effects  in  these  volumes,  although  one  here  withholds 
from  Borrow  the  title  of  '  author '  because  so  much  is 
'  scissors  and  paste,'  and  the  purple  passages  are  only 
occasional.  All  the  same  I  am  astonished  that  no  one 
has  thought  it  worth  while  to  make  a  volume  of  these 
dramatic  episodes,  which  are  clearly  the  work  of  Borrow, 
and  owe  nothing  to  the  innumerable  pamphlets  and  chap- 
books  that  he  brought  into  use.  Take  such  an  episode 
as  that  of  Schening  and  Harhn,  two  young  German 
women,  one  of  whom  pretended  to  have  murdered  her 
infant  in  the  presence  of  the  other  because  she  madly 
supposed  that  this  would  secure  them  bread — and  they 
were  starving.  The  trial,  the  scene  at  the  execution,  the 
confession  on  the  scaffold  of  the  misguided  but  innocent 
girl,  the  respite,  and  then  the  execution — these  make 
up  as  thrilling  a  narrative  as  is  contained  in  the  pages 
of  fiction.  Assuredly  Borrow  did  not  spare  himself  in 
that  race  round  the  bookstalls  of  London  to  find  the 
material  which  the  grasping  Sir  Richard  Phillips  re- 
quired from  him.  He  found,  for  example.  Sir  Herbert 
Croft's  volume,  Love  and  3Iadness,  the  supposed 
correspondence  of  Parson  Hackman  and  JNIartha  Reay, 
whom  he  murdered.  That  correspondence  is  now 
known  to  be  an  invention  of  Croft's.  Borrow  accepted 
it  as  genuine,  and  incorporated  the  whole  of  it  in  his 
story  of  the  Hackman  trial. 

But  after  all,  the  trial  which  we  read  with  greatest 
interest  in  these  six  volumes  is  that  of  John  Thurtell, 


116    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

because  Borrow  had  known  Thurtell  in  his  youth,  and 
gives  us  more  than  one  ghmpse  of  him  in  Lavengro 
and  The  Romany  Rye.  We  recall,  for  example,  Lav- 
engro's  interview  with  the  magistrate  when  a  visitor  is 
announced  : 

'  In  what  can  I  oblige  you,  sir  ?  ^  said  the  magistrate. 
'  Well,  sir  ;  the  soul  of  wit  is  brevity  ;  we  want  a  place  for  an 
approaching  combat  between  my  friend  here  and  a  brave  from 
town.  Passing  by  your  broad  acres  this  fine  morning  we  saw  a 
pightle,  which  we  deemed  would  suit.  Lend  us  that  pightle,  and 
receive  our  thanks;  'twould  be  a  favour,  though  not  much  to 
grant :  we  neither  ask  for  Stonehenge  nor  for  Tempe.' 

My  friend  looked  somewhat  perplexed  ;  after  a  moment,  how- 
ever, he  said,  with  a  firm  but  gentlemanly  air,  '  Sir,  I  am  sorry 
that  I  cannot  comply  with  your  request.' 

'  Not  comply ! '  said  the  man,  his  brow  becoming  dark  as  mid- 
night ;  and  with  a  hoarse  and  savage  tone, '  Not  comply  !  why  not  ? ' 

'  It  is  impossible,  sir — utterly  impossible  ! ' 

'  Why  so  ? ' 

'  I  am  not  compelled  to  give  my  reasons  to  you,  sir,  nor  to  any 
man.' 

'  Let  me  beg  of  you  to  alter  your  decision,'  said  the  man,  in  a 
tone  of  profound  respect. 

'  Utterly  impossible,  sir  ;  I  am  a  magistrate.' 

'  Magistrate  !  then  fare-ye-well,  for  a  green-coated  buffer  and 
a  Harmanbeck.' 

'  Sir,'  said  the  magistrate,  springing  up  with  a  face  fiery  with 
wrath. 

But,  with  a  surly  nod  to  me,  the  man  left  the  apartment ;  and 
in  a  moment  more  the  heavy  footsteps  of  himself  and  his  com- 
panion were  heard  descending  the  staircase. 

'  Who  is  that  man  ?'  said  my  friend,  turning  towards  me. 

'  A  sporting  gentleman,  well  known  in  the  place  from  which  I 
come.' 

'  He  appeared  to  know  you.' 

*  I  have  occasionally  put  on  the  gloves  with  him.' 

'  What  is  his  name  ? ' 


JOHN  THURTELL  117 

In  the  original  manuscript  in  my  possession  the  name 
'  John  Thurtell '  is  given  as  tlie  answer  to  that  inquiry. 
In  the  printed  book  the  chapter  ends  more  abruptly  as 
we  see.  The  second  reference  is  even  more  dramatic. 
It  occurs  when  I^avengro  has  a  conversation  with  his 
friend  the  gypsy  Petulengro  in  a  thunderstorm — when 
all  are  hurrying  to  the  prize-fight.  Here  let  Borrow 
tell  his  story : 

'  Look  up  there,  brother  ! ' 

I  looked  up.  Connected  with  this  tempest  there  was  one 
feature  to  which  I  have  already  alluded — the  wonderful  colours 
of  the  clouds.  Some  were  of  vivid  green,  others  of  the  brightest 
orange,  others  as  black  as  pitch.  The  gypsy's  finger  was  pointed 
to  a  particular  part  of  the  sky. 

'  What  do  you  see  there,  brother .?  "* 

'  A  strange  kind  of  cloud.'' 

'  What  does  it  look  like,  brother  ? ' 

'  Something  like  a  stream  of  blood.' 

'  That  cloud  foreshoweth  a  bloody  dukkeripen.' 

'  A  bloody  fortune  ! '  said  I.     '  And  whom  may  it  betide  ? ' 

'  Who  knows  ? '  said  the  gypsy. 

Down  the  way,  dashing  and  splashing,  and  scattering  man, 
horse,  and  cart  to  the  left  and  right,  came  an  open  barouche, 
drawn  by  four  smoking  steeds,  with  postillions  in  scarlet  jackets 
and  leather  skull-caps.  Two  forms  were  conspicuous  in  it — that 
of  the  successful  bruiser,  and  of  his  friend  and  backer,  the  sporting 
gentleman  of  my  acquaintance. 

'  His  ! '  said  the  gypsy,  pointing  to  the  latter,  whose  stern 
features  wore  a  smile  of  triumph,  as,  probably  recognising  me  in 
the  crowd,  he  nodded  in  the  direction  of  where  I  stood,  as  the 
barouche  hurried  by. 

There  went  the  barouche,  dashing  through  the  rain-gushes, 
and  in  it  one  whose  boast  it  was  that  he  was  equal  to  '  either 
fortune.'  Many  have  heard  of  that  man — many  may  be  desirous 
of  knowing  yet  more  of  him.  I  have  nothing  to  do  with  that 
man's  after  life — he  fulfilled  his  dukkeripen.  '  A  bad,  violent 
man ! '      Softly,    friend ;    when    thou    wouldst    speak    harshly    of 


118    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

the  dead,  remember  that  thou   hast  not  yet  fulfilled  thy  own 
dukkeripen ! 

There  is  yet  another  reference  by  Borrow  to  Thurtell 
in  The  Gypsies  of  Spain,  which  runs  as  follows : 

When  a  boy  of  fourteen  I  was  present  at  a  prize-fight ;  why 
should   I  hide  the  truth  ?     It  took  place   on   a  green   meadow, 

beside  a  running  stream,  close  by  the  old  church  of  E ,  and 

within  a  league  of  the  ancient  town  of  N ,  the  capital  of  one 

of  the  eastern  counties.  The  terrible  Thurtell  was  present,  lord 
of  the  concourse ;  for  wherever  he  moved  he  was  master,  and 
whenever  he  spoke,  even  when  in  chains,  every  other  voice  was 
silent.  He  stood  on  the  mead,  grim  and  pale  as  usual,  with  his 
bruisers  around.  He  it  was,  indeed,  who  got  up  the  fight,  as  he 
had  previously  done  twenty  others;  it  being  his  frequent  boast 
that  he  had  first  introduced  bruising  and  bloodshed  amidst  rural 
scenes,  and  transformed  a  quiet  slumbering  town  into  a  den  of 
Jews  and  metropolitan  thieves. 

Rarely  in  our  criminal  jurisprudence  has  a  murder 
trial  excited  more  interest  than  that  of  John  Thurtell 
for  the  murder  of  Weare — the  Gill's  Hill  INIurder,  as  it 
was  called.  Certainly  no  murder  of  modern  times  has 
had  so  many  indirect  literary  associations.  Borrow, 
Carlyle,  Hazlitt,  Walter  Scott,  and  Thackeray  are 
among  those  who  have  given  it  lasting  fame  by  com- 
ment of  one  kind  or  another ;  and  the  lines  ascribed 
to  Theodore  Hook  are  perhaps  as  well  known  as  any 
other  memory  of  the  tragedy  : 

They  cut  his  throat  from  ear  to  ear, 

His  brain  they  battered  in, 
His  name  was  Mr.  William  Weare, 

He  dwelt  in  Lyon's  Inn. 

Carlyle's  division  of  human  beings  of  the  upper  classes 
into  '  noblemen,  gentlemen,  and  gigmen,'  which  occurs 


JOHN  THURTEI.L  119 

in  liis  essay  on  Richter,  and  a  later  reference  to  gig- 
manhood  which  occurs  in  his  essay  on  Goethe's  Works, 
had  their  inspiration  in  an  episode  in  the  trial  of 
Thurtell,  when  the  question  being  asked,  '  What  sort 
of  a  person  was  Mr.  Weare  ? '  brought  the  answer,  '  He 
was  always  a  respectable  person.'  'What  do  you 
mean  by  respectable  ? '  the  witness  was  asked.  '  He 
kept  a  gig,'  was  the  reply,  which  brought  the  word 
'  gigmanity '  into  our  language.^ 

I  have  said  that  John  Thurtell  and  two  members 
of  his  family  became  subscribers  for  Borrow's  Romantic 
Ballads,"  and  it  is  certain  that  Borrow  must  often  have 
met  Thurtell,  that  is  to  say  looked  at  him  from  a 
distance,  in  some  of  the  scenes  of  prize-fighting  which 
both  affected.  Borrow  merely  as  a  youthful  spectator, 
Thurtell  as  a  reckless  backer  of  one  or  other  combatant. 
Thurtell's  father  was  an  alderman  of  Norwich  living 
in  a  good  house  on  the  Ipswich  Road  when  the  son's 
name  rang  through  England  as  that  of  a  murderer. 
The  father  was  born  in  1765  and  died  in  1846.  Four 
years  after  his  son  John  was  hanged  he  was  elected 
Mayor  of  Norwich,  in  recognition  of  his  violent  ultra- 

^  Another  witness  attained  fame  by  her  answer  to  the  inquiry,  'Was 
supper  postponed?'  with  the  reply,  '^No,  it  was  pork.' 

2  I  have  already  stated  (ch.  x.  p.  Ill)  that  three  members  of  the  Thurtell 
family  subscribed  for  Romantic  Ballads.  I  should  have  hesitated  to  include 
John  Thurtell  among  the  subscribers,  as  he  was  hanged  two  years  before  the 
book  was  published,  had  1  not  the  high  authority  of  Mr.  Walter  Rye,  but 
recently  Mayor  of  Norwich,  and  the  honoured  author  of  Si  History  of  Norfolk 
Families  and  other  works.  Mr.  Rye,  to  whom  I  owe  much  of  the  informa- 
tion concerning  the  Thurtells  published  here,  tells  me  that  there  was  only 
this  one,  'J.  Thurtell.'  Borrow  had  doubtless  been  appealing  for  subscribers 
for  a  very  long  time.  I  cannot,  however,  accept  Mr.  Rye's  suggestion  to  me 
that  Borrow  left  Norwich  because  he  was  mixed  up  with  Thurtell  in  ultra- Whig 
or  Radical  scrapes,  the  intimidation  and  'cooping'  of  Tory  voters  being  a 
characteristic  of  the  elections  of  that  day  with  the  wilder  spirits,  of  whom 
Thurtell  was  doubtless  one.  Borrow's  sympathies  were  with  the  Tory  party 
from  his  childhood  up — following  his  father. 


120    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Whig  or  blue  and  white  political  opinions.  He  had 
been  nominated  as  mayor  both  in  1818  and  1820,  but 
it  was  perhaps  the  extraordinary  '  advertisement '  of  his 
son's  shameful  death  that  gave  the  citizens  of  Norwich 
the  necessary  enthusiasm  to  elect  Alderman  Thurtell 
as  mayor  in  1828.  It  was  in  those  oligarchical  days  a 
not  unnatural  fashion  to  be  against  the  Government. 
The  feast  at  the  Guildhall  on  this  occasion  was  attended 
by  four  hundred  and  sixty  guests.  A  year  before  John 
Thurtell  was  hanged,  in  1823,  his  father  moved  a  violent 
political  resolution  in  Norwich,  but  was  out-Heroded 
by  Cobbett,  who  moved  a  much  more  extreme  one  over 
his  head  and  carried  it  by  an  immense  majority.  It 
was  a  brutal  time,  and  tliere  cannot  be  a  doubt  but 
that  Alderman  Thurtell,  while  busy  setting  the  world 
straight,  failed  to  bring  up  his  family  very  well.  John, 
as  we  shall  see,  was  hanged ;  Thomas,  another  brother, 
was  associated  with  him  in  many  disgraceful  trans- 
actions ;  while  a  third  brother,  George,  also  a  subscriber, 
by  the  way,  to  Borrow's  Romantic  Ballads,  who  was  a 
landscape  gardener  at  Eaton,  died  in  prison  in  1848 
under  sentence  for  theft.  Apart  from  a  rather  riotous 
and  bad  bringing  up,  which  may  be  pleaded  in  ex- 
tenuation, it  is  not  possible  to  waste  much  sympathy 
over  John  Thurtell.  He  had  thoroughly  disgraced 
himself  in  Norwich  before  he  removed  to  London. 
There  he  got  further  and  further  into  difficulties,  and 
one  of  the  many  publications  which  arose  out  of  his 
trial  and  execution  was  devoted  to  pointing  the  moral 
of  the  evils  of  gambling.^     It  was  bad  luck  at  cards, 

^  The  Fatal  Effects  of  Gambling  Exemplified  in  the  Murder  of  Wm.  Weare 
and  the  Trial  and  Fate  of  John  Thurtell,  the  Murderer,  and  his  Accomplices. 
London:  Thomas  Kelly,  Paternoster  Row.  1824.  I  have  a  very  consider- 
able number  of  Weare  pamphlets  in  my  possession,  one  of  them  being  a 


JOHN  THURTELL  121 

and  the  loss  of  mucli  money  to  William  Weare,  who 
seems  to  have  been  an  exceedingly  vile  person,  that  led 
to  the  murder.  Thurtell  had  a  friend  named  Probert 
who  lived  in  a  quiet  cottage  in  a  byway  of  Hertford- 
shire— Gill's  Hill,  near  Elstree.  He  suggested  to 
Weare  in  a  friendly  way  that  they  should  go  for  a 
day's  shooting  at  Gill's  Hill,  and  that  Probert  would 
put  them  up  for  the  night.  Weare  went  home,  col- 
lected a  few  things  in  a  bag,  and  took  a  hackney  coach 
to  a  given  spot,  where  Thurtell  met  him  with  a  gig. 
The  two  men  drove  out  of  London  together.  The 
date  was  24th  October  1823.  On  the  high-road  they 
met  and  passed  Probert  and  a  companion  named 
Joseph  Hunt,  who  had  even  been  instructed  by  Thurtell 
to  bring  a  sack  with  him — this  was  actually  used  to 
carry  away  the  body — and  must  therefore  have  been 
privy  to  the  intended  murder.  By  the  time  the  second 
gig  containing  Probert  and  Hunt  arrived  near  Probert's 
cottage,  Thurtell  met  it  in  the  roadway,  according  to 
their  accounts,  and  told  the  two  men  that  he  had  done 
the  deed  ;  that  he  liad  killed  Weare  first  by  ineffectively 
shooting  him,  then  by  dashing  out  his  brains  with  his 
pistol,  and  finally  by  cutting  his  throat.  Thurtell 
further  told  his  friends,  if  their  evidence  was  to  be 
trusted,  that  he  had  left  the  body  behind  a  hedge. 
In  the  night  the  three  men  placed  the  body  in  a 
sack  and  carried  it  to  a  pond  near  Probert's  house 
and  threw  it  in.  The  next  night  they  fished  it  out 
and  threw  it  into  another  pond  some  distance  away. 

record  of  the  trial  by  Pierce  Egan,  the  author  of  Life  in  London  and  Boxiana. 
Walter  Scott  writes  in  his  diary  of  being  absorbed  in  an  account  of  the  trial, 
while  he  deprecates  John  Bull's  maudlin  sentiment  over  '  the  pitiless  assassin.' 
That  was  in  1826,  but  in  1828  Scott  went  out  of  his  way  when  travelling  from 
London  to  Edinburgh,  to  visit  Gill's  Hill,  and  describes  the  scene  of  the 
tragedy  very  vividly.     Lockhart's  Life,  eh.  Ixxvi. 


122    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Thurtell  meanwhile  had  divided  the  spoil — some  £20, 
which  he  said  was  all  that  he  had  obtained  from 
Weare's  body — with  his  companions.  Hunt,  it  may- 
be mentioned,  afterwards  declared  his  conviction  that 
Thurtell,  when  he  first  committed  the  murder,  had 
removed  his  victim's  principal  treasure,  notes  to  the 
value  of  three  or  four  hundred  pounds.  Suspicion 
was  aroused,  and  the  hue  and  cry  raised  through  the 
finding  by  a  labourer  of  the  pistol  in  the  hedge,  and 
the  discovery  of  a  pool  of  blood  on  the  roadway. 
Probert  promptly  turned  informer;  Hunt  also  tried 
to  save  himself  by  a  rambling  confession,  and  it  was 
he  who  revealed  where  the  body  was  concealed, 
accompanying  the  officers  to  the  pond  and  pointing 
out  the  exact  spot  where  the  corpse  would  be  found. 
When  recovered  the  body  was  taken  to  the  Artichoke 
Inn  at  Elstree,  and  here  the  coroner's  inquest  was  held. 
Meanwhile  Thurtell  had  been  arrested  in  London  and 
taken  down  to  Elstree  to  be  present  at  the  inquest.  A 
verdict  of  guilty  against  all  three  miscreants  was  given 
by  the  coroner's  jury,  and  Weare's  body  was  buried  in 
Elstree  Churchyard.^ 

*  Elstree  had  already  had  its  association  with  a  murder  case,  for  Martha 
Keay,  the  mistress  of  John  Montagu,  fourth  Earl  of  Sandwich,  was  buried 
in  the  church  in  1770.  She  was  the  mother  of  several  of  the  Earl's  children, 
one  of  whom  was  Basil  Montagu.  She  was  a  beautiful  woman  and  a 
delightful  singer,  and  was  appearing  on  the  stage  at  Covent  Garden,  which 
theatre  she  was  leaving  on  the  night  of  7th  April  1779,  when  the  Reverend 
James  Hackman,  Vicar  of  Wiveton  in  Norfolk,  shot  her  through  the  head 
with  a  pistol  in  a  iit  of  jealous  rage.  Hackman  was  hanged  at  Tyburn, 
Boswell  attending  the  funeral.  Croft's  supposed  letters  between  Hackman 
and  Martha  Reay,  which  made  a  great  sensation  when  issued  under  the  title  of 
Love  and  Madnem,  are  now  known  to  be  spurious  (see  ch.  x.  p.  115).  Martha 
Reay  was  buried  in  the  chancel  of  Elstree  Church,  but  Lord  Sandwich,  who, 
although  he  sent  word  to  Hackman,  who  asked  his  foi'giveness,  that  'he  had 
robbed  him  of  all  comfort  in  this  world,'  took  no  pains  to  erect  a  monument 
over  her  remains.     On  28th  February  1913  the  present  writer  visited  Elstree 


JOHN  THURTELL  123 

In  January  1824  John  Thurtell  was  brought  to 
trial  at  Hertford  Assizes,  and  Hunt  also.  But  first  of 
all  there  were  some  interesting  proceedings  in  the 
Court  of  King's  Bench,  before  the  Chief  Justice  and 
two  other  judges,^  complaining  that  Thurtell  had  not 
been  allowed  to  see  his  counsel.  And  there  were 
other  points  at  issue.  Thurtell's  counsel  moved  for 
a  criminal  injunction  against  the  proprietor  of  the 
Surrey  Theatre  in  that  a  performance  had  been  held 
there,  and  was  being  held,  which  assumed  Thurtell's 
guilt,  the  identical  horse  and  gig  being  exhibited  in 
which  Weare  was  supposed  to  have  ridden  to  the  scene 
of  his  death.  Finally  this  was  arranged,  and  a  manda- 
mus was  granted  '  commanding  the  admission  of  legal 
advisers  to  the  prisoner.'  At  last  the  trial  came  on  at 
Hertford  before  Mr.  Justice  Park.  It  lasted  two  days, 
although  the  judge  wished  to  go  on  all  night  in  order 
to  finish  in  one.  But  the  protest  of  Thurtell,  sup- 
ported by  the  jury,  led  to  an  adjournment.  Probert 
had  been  set  free  and  appeared  as  a  witness.  The 
jury  gave  a  verdict  of  guilty,  and  Thurtell  and  Hunt 
were  sentenced  to  be  hanged,  but  Hunt  escaped  with 

in  the  interest  of  this  book.  He  found  that  the  church  of  Martha  Reay  and 
William  AVeare  had  long  disappeared.  A  new  structure  dating  from  1853 
had  taken  its  place.  The  present  vicar,  he  was  told,  has  located  the  spot 
where  Weare  was  buried,  and  it  coincides  with  the  old  engravings.  Martha 
Reay's  remains,  at  the  time  of  the  rebuilding,  were  removed  to  the  church- 
yard, and  lie  near  the  door  of  the  vestry,  lacking  all  memorial.  The 
Artichoke  Inn  has  also  been  rebuilt,  and  'Weare's  Pond,'  which  alone 
recalls  the  tragedy  to-day,  where  tlie  body  was  found,  has  contracted  into  a 
small  pool.  It  is,  however,  clearly  authentic,  the  brook,  as  pictured  in  the 
old  trial-books,  now  running  under  the  road. 

^  One  of  them  was  Mr.  Justice  Best,  of  whom  it  is  recorded  that  a 
certain  index  had  the  reference  line,  'Mr.  Justice  Best:  his  Great  Mind,' 
which  seemed  to  have  no  justification  in  the  mental  qualities  of  that 
worthy,  but  was  explained  when  one  referred  to  the  context  and  saw  that 
'  Mr.  Justice  Best  said  that  he  had  a  great  mind  to  commit  the  witness  for 
contempt.' 


124    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

transportation.  Thurtell  made  his  own  speech  for  the 
defence,  which  had  a  great  effect  upon  the  jury,  until 
the  judge  swept  most  of  its  sophistries  away.  It  was, 
however,  a  very  able  performance.  Thurtell's  line  of 
defence  was  to  declare  that  Hunt  and  Probert  were  the 
murderers,  and  that  he  was  a  victim  of  their  perjuries. 
If  hanged,  he  would  be  hanged  on  circumstantial 
evidence  only,  and  he  gave,  with  great  elaboration,  the 
details  of  a  number  of  cases  where  men  had  been 
wrongfully  hanged  upon  circumstantial  evidence.  His 
lawyers  had  apparently  provided  him  with  books  con- 
taining these  examples  from  the  past,  and  his  month 
in  prison  was  devoted  to  this  defence,  which  showed 
great  ability.  The  trial  took  place  on  6th  January 
1824,  and  Thurtell  was  hanged  on  the  9th,  in  front  of 
Hertford  Gaol :  his  body  was  given  to  the  Anatomical 
Museum  in  London.  A  contemporary  report  says 
that  Thurtell,  on  the  scaffold, 

fixed  his  eyes  on  a  young  gentleman  in  the  crowd,  whom  he  had 
frequently  seen  as  a  spectator  at  the  commencement  of  the  pro- 
ceedings against  him.  Seeing  that  the  individual  was  affected  by 
the  circumstances,  he  removed  them  to  another  quarter,  and  in  so 
doing  recognised  an  individual  well  known  in  the  sporting  circles, 
to  whom  he  made  a  slight  bow. 

The  reader  of  Lavengro  might  speculate  whether  that 
'  young  gentleman '  was  Borrow,  but  Borrow  was  in 
Norwich  in  January  1824,  his  father  dying  in  the 
following  month.  In  his  Celebrated  Trials  Borrow 
tells  the  story  of  the  execution  with  wonderful  vividness, 
and  supplies  effective  quotations  from  'an  eyewitness.' 
Borrow  no  doubt  exaggerated  his  acquaintance  with 
Thurtell,  as  in  his  Robinson  Crusoe  romance  he  was 
fully  entitled  to  do  for  effect.  He  was  too  young  at 
the  time  to  have  been  much  noticed  by  a  man  so  much 


JOHN  THURTELL  125 

his  senior.  The  writer  who  accepts  Borrows  own 
statement  that  he  really  gave  him  '  some  lessons  in  the 
noble  art '  is  too  credulous,^  and  the  statement  that 
Thurtell's  house  '  on  the  Ipswich  Road  was  a  favourite 
rendezvous  for  the  Fancy'  is  unsupported  by  evidence. 
Old  Alderman  Thurtell  owned  the  house  in  question, 
and  we  find  no  evidence  that  he  encouraged  his  son's 
predilection  for  prize-fighting.  In  The  Romany  Rye  he 
gives  his  friend  the  jockey  as  his  authority  for  the 
following  apologia : 

The  night  before  the  day  he  was  hanged  at  H ,  I  harnessed 

a  Suffolk  Punch  to  my  light  gig,  the  same  Puncli  which  I  had 
offered  to  him,  which  I  have  ever  since  kept,  and  which  brought 
me  and  this  short  young  man  to  Horncastle,  and  in  eleven  hours 
I   drove  tliat  Punch  one  hundred  and  ten  miles.     I    arrived    at 

H just  in  the  nick  of  time.     There  was  the  ugly  jail — the 

scaffold — and  there  upon  it  stood  the  only  friend  I  ever  had  in 
the  world.  Driving  my  Punch,  which  was  all  in  a  foam,  into  the 
midst  of  the  crowd,  which  made  way  for  me  as  if  it  knew  what  I 
came  for,  I  stood  up  in  my  gig,  took  off  my  hat,  and  shouted, 
'  God  Almighty  bless  you.  Jack  ! '  The  dying  man  turned  his 
pale  grim  face  towards  me — for  his  face  was  always  somewhat 
grim,  do  you  see — nodded  and  said,  or  I  thought  I  heard  him  say, 

'  All  right,  old  chap.'     The   next   moment my  eyes   water. 

He  had  a  high  heart,  got  into  a  scrape  whilst  in  the  marines,  lost 
his  half-pay,  took  to  the  turf,  ring,  gambling,  and  at  last  cut  the 
throat  of  a  villain  who  had  robbed  him  of  nearly  all  he  had.  But 
he  had  good  qualities,  and  I  know  for  certain  that  he  never  did 
half  the  bad  things  laid  to  his  charge. 


*  See  an  introduction  by  Thomas  ^eccomhe  to  Lavengro  in  'Everyman's 
Library.' 


CHAPTER   XII 

BORROW  AND  THE  FANCY 

George  Borrow  had  no  sympathy  with  Thurtell  the 
gambler.  I  can  find  no  evidence  in  his  career  of  any 
taste  for  games  of  hazard  or  indeed  for  games  of  any 
kind,  although  we  recall  that  as  a  mere  child  he  was 
able  to  barter  a  pack  of  cards  for  the  Irish  language. 
But  he  had  certainly  very  considerable  sympathy  with 
the  notorious  criminal  as  a  friend  and  patron  of  prize- 
fighting. This  now  discredited  pastime  Borrow  ever 
counted  a  virtue.  Was  not  his  God-fearing  father  a 
champion  in  his  way,  or,  at  least,  had  he  not  in  open 
fight  beaten  the  champion  of  the  moment,  Big  Ben 
Brain  ?  Moreover,  who  was  there  in  those  days  with 
blood  in  his  veins  who  did  not  count  the  cultivation  of 
the  Fancy  as  the  noblest  and  most  manly  of  pursuits  ! 
Why,  William  Hazlitt,  a  prince  among  English  essay- 
ists, whose  writings  are  a  beloved  classic  in  our  day, 
wrote  in  21ie  New  Monthly  3Iagazine  in  these  very 
years  ^  his  own  eloquent  impression,  and  even  introduces 
John  Thurtell  more  than  once  as  '  Tom  Turtle,'  little 
thinking  then  of  the  fate  that  was  so  soon  to  overtake 
him.     What  could  be  more  lyrical  than  this  : 

1  The  New  Monthly  Magazine,  February  1822,  'The  Fight.'  Reprinted 
among  William  Hazlitt's  Fugitive  Writings  in  vol.  xii.  of  his  Collected 
Works  (Dent,  1904). 

120 


BORROW  AND  THE  FANCY     127 

Reader,  have  you  ever  seen  a  fight  ?  If  not,  you  have  a 
pleasure  to  come,  at  least  if  it  is  a  fight  like  that  between  the 
Gas-man  and  Bill  Neate. 

And  then  the  best  historian  of  prize-fighting,  Henry 
Downes  Miles,  the  author  of  Pugilistica,  has  his  own 
statement  of  the  case.  You  will  find  it  in  his  mono- 
graph on  John  Jackson,  the  pugilist  who  taught  Lord 
Byron  to  box,  and  received  the  immortality  of  an 
eulogistic  footnote  in  Don  Juan,  Here  is  Miles's 
defence : 

No  small  portion  of  the  public  has  taken  it  for  granted  that 
pugilism  and  blackguardism  are  synonymous.  It  is  as  an  antidote 
to  these  slanderers  that  we  pen  a  candid  history  of  the  boxers ; 
and  taking  the  general  habits  of  men  of  humble  origin  (elevated 
by  their  courage  and  bodily  gifts  to  be  the  associates  of  those 
more  fortunate  in  worldly  position),  we  fearlessly  maintain  that 
the  best  of  our  boxers  present  as  good  samples  of  honesty,  gener- 
osity of  spirit,  goodness  of  heart  and  humanity,  as  an  equal 
number  of  men  of  any  class  of  society. 

From  Samuel  Johnson  to  George  Bernard  Shaw 
literary  England  has  had  a  kindness  for  the  pugilist, 
although  the  magistrate  has  long,  and  rightly,  ruled 
him  out  as  impossible.  Borrow  carried  his  enthusiasm 
further  than  any,  and  no  account  of  him  that  con- 
centrates attention  upon  his  accomplishment  as  a  dis- 
tributor of  Bibles  and  ignores  his  delight  in  fisticuffs, 
has  any  grasp  of  the  real  George  Borrow.  Indeed  it 
may  be  said,  and  will  be  shown  in  the  course  of  our 
story,  that  Borrow  entered  upon  Bible  distribution  in 
the  spirit  of  a  pugilist  rather  than  that  of  an  evangelist. 
But  to  return  to  Borrow's  pugilistic  experiences.  He 
claims,  as  we  have  seen,  occasionally  to  have  put  on 
the  gloves  with  John  Thurtell.  He  describes  vividly 
enough  his   own  conflicts  with  the   Flaming  Tinman 


128    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

and  with  Petulengro.  His  one  heroine,  Isopel  Berners, 
had  '  Fair  Play  and  Long  Melford '  as  her  ideal,  '  Long 
Melford '  being  the  good  right-handed  blow  with  which 
Lavengro  conquered  the  Tinman.  Isopel,  we  re- 
member, had  learned  in  Long  Melford  Union  to  '  Fear 
God  and  take  your  own  part  I ' 

George  Borrow,  indeed,  was  at  home  with  the  whole 
army  of  prize-fighters,  who  came  down  to  us  like  the 
Roman  Csesars  or  the  Kings  of  England  in  a  note- 
worthy procession,  their  dynasty  commencing  with 
James  Fig  of  Thame,  who  began  to  reign  in  1719,  and 
closing  with  Tom  King,  who  beat  Heenan  in  1863,  or 
with  Jem  Mace,  who  flourished  in  a  measure  until 
1872.  With  what  zest  must  Borrow  have  followed 
the  account  of  the  greatest  battle  of  all,  that 
between  Heenan  and  Tom  Sayers  at  Farnborough 
in  1860,  when  it  was  said  that  Parliament  had  been 
emptied  to  patronise  a  prize-fight ;  and  this  although 
Heenan  complained  that  he  had  been  chased  out  of 
eight  counties.  For  by  this  time,  in  spite  of  lordly 
patronage,  pugilism  was  doomed,  and  the  more  harm- 
less boxing  had  taken  its  place.  '  Pity  that  corruption 
should  have  crept  in  amongst  them,'  sighed  Lavengro 
in  a  memorable  passage,  in  which  he  also  has  his  pgean 
of  praise  for  the  bruisers  of  England  : 

Let  no  one  sneer  at  the  bruisers  of  England — what  were  the 
gladiators  of  Rome,  or  the  bull-fighters  of  Spain,  in  its  palmiest 
days,  compared  to  England's  bruisers  ?  ^ 

^  Lavengro,  ch.  xxvi.  '  \\.  is  as  good  as  Homer,'  says  Mr.  Augustine 
Birrell,  quoting  the  whole  passage  in  liis  Res  Judicatce.  Mr.  Birrell  tells  a 
delightful  story  of  an  old  Quaker  lady  who  was  heard  to  say  at  a  dinner- 
table,  when  the  subject  of  momentary  conversation  was  a  late  prize-fight : 
'  Oh,  pity  it  was  that  ever  corruption  should  have  crept  in  amongst  them ' — 
she  had  just  been  reading  Lavengro. 


THE  FAMILY  OF  JASl'i'.R  I'KTULF.NGKO 


'Jasper'  or  Ambi'ose  Smith  wasn  very  okl  man  when  this  picture  was  taken 

by  Mr.  Andrew  Innes  of  Dunbar  in  1878.      In  both  pictures  we  see  Sanspireha, 

Jasper's  wife,  seated  and  holding  a  child.     We  are  indebted  to  Mr.  Charles 

Spence  of  Dunbar  foi'  these  interestinsj  groups. 


BORROW  AND  THE  FANCY     129 

Yes :  Borrow  was  never  hard  on  the  bruisers  of 
England,  and  followed  their  achievements,  it  may  be 
said,  from  his  cradle  to  his  grave.  His  beloved  father 
had  brought  him  up,  so  to  speak,  upon  memories  of  one 
who  was  champion  before  George  was  born — Big  Ben 
Brain  of  Bristol.  Brain,  although  always  called  '  Big 
Ben,'  was  only  5  feet  10  in.  high.  He  was  for  years  a 
coal  porter  at  a  wharf  off  the  Strand.  It  was  in  1791 
that  Ben  Brain  won  the  championship  which  placed 
him  upon  a  pinnacle  in  the  minds  of  all  robust  people. 
The  Duke  of  Hamilton  then  backed  him  against  the 
then  champion,  Tom  Johnson,  for  five  hundred  guineas. 
*  Public  expectation,'  says  The  Oracle,  a  contemporary 
newspaper,  '  never  was  raised  so  high  by  any  pugilistic 
contest ;  great  bets  were  laid,  and  it  is  estimated  £20,000 
was  wagered  on  this  occasion.'  Ben  Brain  was  the 
undisputed  conqueror,  we  are  told,  in  eighteen  rounds, 
occupying  no  more  than  twenty-one  minutes.^  Brain 
died  in  1794,  and  all  the  biographers  tell  of  the  piety  of 
his  end,  so  that  Borrow's  father  may  have  read  the 
Bible  to  him  in  his  last  moments,  as  Borrow  avers,^  but 
I  very  much  doubt  the  accuracy  of  the  following : 

Honour  to  Brain,  who  four  months  after  the  event  which  I 
have  now  narrated  was  champion  of  England,  having  conquered 
the  heroic  Johnson.  Honour  to  Brain,  who,  at  the  end  of  other 
four  months,  worn  out  by  the  dreadful  blows  which  he  had  received 
in  his  manly  combats,  expired  in  the  arms  of  my  father,  who  read 
the  Bible  to  him  in  his  latter  moments — Big  Ben  Brain. 

We  have  already  shown  that  Brain  lived  for  four  years 
after  his  fight  with  Johnson.  Perhaps  the  fight  in 
Hyde  Park  between  Borrow's  father  and  Ben,  as 
narrated   in   Lavengro,  is  all   romancing.      It  makes 

1  Pugilistica,  vol.  i.  69.  ^  Lavengro,  ch.  i. 


130    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

good  reading  in  any  case,  as  does  Borrow's  eulogy  of 
some  of  his  own  contemporaries  of  the  prize-ring : 

So  the  bruisers  of  England  are  come  to  be  present  at  the  grand 
fight  speedily  coming  off;  there  they  are  met  in  the  precincts  of 
the  old  town,  near  the  field  of  the  chapel,  planted  with  tender 
saplings  at  the  restoration  of  sporting  Charles,  which  are  now 
become  venerable  elms  as  high  as  many,  a  steeple.  There  they  are 
met  at  a  fitting  rendezvous,  where  a  retired  coachman,  with  one 
leg,  keeps  an  hotel  and  a  bowling-green.  I  think  I  now  see  them 
upon  the  bowling-green,  the  men  of  renown,  amidst  hundreds  of 
people  with  no  renown  at  all,  who  gaze  upon  them  with  timid 
wonder.  Fame,  after  all,  is  a  glorious  thing,  though  it  lasts  only 
for  a  day.  There's  Cribb,  the  champion  of  England,  and  perhaps 
the  best  man  in  England;  there  he  is,  with  his  huge,  massive 
figure,  and  face  wonderfully  like  that  of  a  lion.  There  is  Belcher, 
the  younger,  not  the  mighty  one,  who  is  gone  to  his  place,  but 
the  Teucer  Belcher,  the  most  scientific  pugilist  that  ever  entered 
a  ring,  only  wanting  strength  to  be,  I  won't  say  what.  He  appears 
to  walk  before  me  now,  as  he  did  that  evening,  with  his  white  hat, 
white  greatcoat,  thin  genteel  figure,  springy  step,  and  keen, 
determined  eye.  Crosses  him,  what  a  contrast !  grim,  savage 
Shelton,  who  has  a  civil  word  for  nobody,  and  a  hard  blow  for 
anybody — hard  !  one  blow,  given  with  the  proper  play  of  his 
athletic  arm,  will  unsense  a  giant.  Yonder  individual,  who  strolls 
about  with  his  hands  behind  him,  supporting  his  brown  coat 
lappets,  under-sized,  and  who  looks  anything  but  what  he  is,  is 
the  king  of  the  light  weights,  so  called — Randall !  the  terrible 
Randall,  who  has  Irish  blood  in  his  veins — not  the  better  for 
that,  nor  the  worse ;  and  not  far  from  him  is  his  last  antagonist, 
Ned  Turner,  who,  though  beaten  by  him,  still  thinks  himself  as 
good  a  man,  in  which  he  is,  perhaps,  right,  for  it  was  a  near  thing ; 
and  '  a  better  shentleman,''  in  which  he  is  quite  right,  for  he  is  a 
Welshman.  But  how  shall  I  name  them  all  ?  They  were  there 
by  dozens,  and  all  tremendous  in  their  way.  There  was  Bulldog 
Hudson,  and  fearless  Scroggins,  who  beat  the  conqueror  of  Sam 
the  Jew.  There  was  Black  Richmond — no,  he  was  not  there,  but 
I  knew  him  well ;  he  was  the  most  dangerous  of  blacks,  even  with 
a  broken  thigh.     There  was  Purcell,  who  could  never  conquer  till 


BORROW  AND  THE  FANCY     131 

all  seemed  over  with  him.  There  was — what  !  shall  I  name  thee 
last  ?  ay,  why  not  ?  I  believe  that  thou  art  the  last  of  all  that 
strong  family  still  above  the  sod,  where  mayest  thou  long  continue 
— true  piece  of  English  stuff,  Tom  of  Bedford — sharp  as  winter, 
kind  as  spring. 

All  this  is  very  accurate  history.  We  know  that  there 
really  was  this  wonderful  gathering  of  the  bruisers  of 
England  assembled  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Norwich 
in  July  1820,  that  is  to  say,  sixteen  miles  away  at 
North  Walsham.  More  than  25,000  men,  it  is  esti- 
mated, gathered  to  see  Edward  Painter  of  Norwich 
fight  Tom  Oliver  of  London  for  a  purse  of  a  hundred 
guineas.  There  were  three  Belchers,  heroes  of  the 
prize-ring,  but  Borrow  here  refers  to  Tom,  whose 
younger  brother,  Jem,  had  died  in  1811  at  the  age 
of  thirty.  Tom  Belcher  died  in  1854  at  the  age  of 
seventy-one.  Thomas  Cribb  was  champion  of  England 
from  1805  to  1820.  One  of  Cribb's  greatest  fights  was 
with  Jem  Belcher  in  1807,  when,  in  the  forty-first  and 
last  round,  as  we  are  told  by  the  chroniclers,  '  Cribb 
proving  the  stronger  man  put  in  two  weak  blows, 
when  Belcher,  quite  exhausted,  fell  upon  the  ropes  and 
gave  up  the  combat.'  Cribb  had  a  prolonged  career 
of  glory,  but  he  died  in  poverty  in  1848.  Happier  was 
an  earlier  champion,  John  Gully,  who  held  the  glorious 
honour  for  three  years — from  1805  to  1808.  Gully 
turned  tavern-keeper,  and  making  a  fortune  out  of 
sundry  speculations,  entered  Parliament  as  member  for 
Pontefract,  and  lived  to  be  eighty  years  of  age. 

It  is  necessary  to  dwell  upon  Borrow  as  the  friend 
of  prize-fighters,  because  no  one  understands  Borrow 
who  does  not  realise  that  his  real  interests  were  not  in 
literature  but  in  action.  He  would  have  liked  to  join 
the  army  but  could  not  obtain  a  commission.     And  so 


132    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

he  had  to  be  content  with  such  fighting  as  was  possible. 
He  cared  more  for  the  men  who  could  use  their  fists 
than  for  those  who  could  but  wield  the  pen.  He  would, 
we  may  be  sure,  have  rejoiced  to  know  that  many  more 
have  visited  the  tomb  of  Tom  Sayers  in  Highgate 
Cemetery  than  have  visited  the  tomb  of  George  Eliot 
in  the  same  burial-ground.  A  curious  moral  obliquity 
this,  you  may  say.  But  to  recognise  it  is  to  under- 
stand one  side  of  Borrow,  and  an  interesting  side 
withal. 


CHAPTER    XIII 

EIGHT  YEARS  OF  VAGABONDAGE 

There  has  been  much  nonsense  written  concerning 
what  has  been  called  the  '  veiled  period '  of  George 
Borrow's  life.  This  has  arisen  from  a  letter  which 
Richard  Ford  of  the  Handbook  for  Travellers  in  Spain 
wrote  to  Borrow  after  a  visit  to  him  at  Oulton  in  1844. 
Borrow  was  full  of  his  projected  Lavengro,  the  idea  of 
which  he  outlined  to  his  friends.  He  was  a  genial  man 
in  those  days,  on  the  wave  of  a  popular  success.  Was 
not  The  Bible  in  Spain  passing  merrily  from  edition  to 
edition !  Borrow,  it  is  clear,  told  Ford  that  he  was 
writing  his  'Autobiography' — he  had  no  misgiving 
then  as  to  what  he  should  call  it — and  he  evidently 
proposed  to  end  it  in  1825  and  not  in  1833,  when  the 
Bible  Society  gave  him  his  real  chance  in  life.  Ford 
begged  him,  in  letters  that  came  into  Dr.  Knapp's 
possession,  and  from  which  he  quotes  all  too  meagrely, 
not  to  *  drop  a  curtain '  over  the  eight  years  succeed- 
ing 1825.  'No  doubt,'  says  Ford,  'it  will  excite  a 
mysterious  interest,'  but  then  he  adds  in  effect  it  will 
lead  to  a  wrong  construction  being  put  upon  the 
omission.  Well,  there  can  be  but  one  interpretation, 
and  that  not  an  unnatural  one.  Borrow  had  a  very 
rough  time  during  these  eight  years.  His  vanity  was 
hurt,  and  no  wonder.     It  seems  a  small  matter  to  us 

1S3 


134    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

now  that  Charles  Dickens  should  have  been  ashamed 
of  the  blacking-bottle  episode  of  his  boyhood.  Genius 
has  a  right  to  a  penurious,  and  even  to  a  sordid,  boyhood. 
But  genius  has  no  right  to  a  sordid  manhood,  and  here 
was  George  '  Olaus '  Borrow,  who  was  able  to  claim  the 
friendship  of  William  Taylor,  the  German  scholar; 
who  was  able  to  boast  of  his  association  with  sound 
scholastic  foundations,  with  the  High  School  at  Edin- 
burgh and  the  Grammar  School  at  Norwich ;  who  was 
a  great  linguist  and  had  made  rare  translations  from 
the  poetry  of  many  nations,  starving  in  the  byways  of 
England  and  of  France.  What  a  fate  for  such  a  man  that 
he  should  have  been  so  unhappy  for  eight  years;  should 
have  led  the  most  penurious  of  roving  lives,  and  almost 
certainly  have  been  in  prison  as  a  common  tramp. ^  It 
was  all  very  well  to  romance  about  a  poverty-stricken 
youth.  But  when  youth  had  fled  there  ceased  to  be 
romance,  and  only  sordidness  was  forthcoming.  From 
his  twenty-third  to  his  thirty-first  year  George  Borrow 
was  engaged  in  a  hopeless  quest  for  the  means  of 
making  a  living.  There  is,  however,  very  little  mystery. 
Many  incidents  of  each  of  these  years  are  revealed  at 
one  or  other  point.  His  home,  to  which  he  returned 
from  time  to  time,  was  with  his  mother  at  the  cottage 
in  Willow  Lane,  Norwich.  Whether  he  made  sufiicient 
profit  out  of  a  horse,  as  in  The  Romany  Rye,  to  enable 
him  to  travel  upon  the  proceeds,  as  Dr.  Knapp  thinks, 
we  cannot  say.  Dr.  Knapp  is  doubtless  right  in 
assuming  that  during  this  period  he  led  '  a  life  of 
roving  adventure,'  his  own  authorised  version  of  his 
career  at  the  time,  as  we  have  quoted  from  the  bio- 
graphy in  his  handwriting  from  Men  of  the  Time.     But 

*  (^uly  thus  can  we  explain  Borrow's  later  declaration  that  he  had  four 
times  been  in  prison. 


EIGHT  YEARS  OF  VAGABONDAGE    135 

how  far  this  roving  was  confined  to  England,  how  far 
it  extended  to  other  lands,  we  do  not  know.  We  are, 
however,  satisfied  that  he  starved  through  it  all,  that 
he  rarely  had  a  penny  in  his  pocket.  At  a  later  date 
he  gave  it  to  be  understood  at  times  that  he  had  visited 
the  East,  and  that  India  had  revealed  her  glories  to 
him.  We  do  not  believe  it.  Defoe  was  Borrow's 
master  in  literature,  and  he  shared  Defoe's  right  to  lie 
magnificently  on  occasion.  Dr.  Knapp  has  collected 
the  various  occasions  upon  which  Borrow  referred  to  his 
supposed  earlier  travels  abroad  prior  to  his  visit  to  St. 
Petersburg  in  1833.  The  only  quotation  that  carries 
conviction  is  an  extract  from  a  letter  to  his  mother  from 
St.  Petersburg,  where  he  writes  of  '  London,  Paris, 
Madrid,  and  other  capitals  which  I  have  visited.'  I  am 
not,  however,  disinclined  to  accept  Dr.  Knapp's  theory 
that  in  1 826-7  Borrow  did  travel  to  Paris  and  through 
certain  parts  of  Southern  Europe.  It  is  strange,  all  the 
same,  that  adventures  which,  had  they  taken  place, 
would  have  provoked  a  thousand  observations,  pro- 
voked but  two  or  three  passing  references.  Yet  there 
is  no  getting  over  that  letter  to  his  mother,  nor  that 
reference  in  The  Gypsies  of  Spain,  where  he  says — 
'  Once  in  the  south  of  France,  when  I  was  weary, 
hungry,  and  penniless  .  .  .'  Borrow  certainly  did 
some  travel  in  these  years,  but  it  was  sordid,  lacking  in 
all  dignity — never  afterwards  to  be  recalled.  For  the 
most  part,  however,  he  was  in  England.  We  know  that 
Borrow  was  in  Norwich  in  1826,  for  we  have  seen  him 
superintending  the  publication  of  the  Rovia?itic  Ballads 
by  subscription  in  that  year.  In  that  year  also  he 
wrote  the  letter  to  Haydon,  the  painter,  to  say  that 
he  was  ready  to  sit  for  him,  but  that  he  was  'going 
to   the    south    of    France    in    a    little    better  than   a 


136    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

fortnight.'  ^  We  know  also  that  he  was  in  Norwich  in 
1827,  because  it  was  then,  and  not  in  1818  as  described 
in  Lavengro,  that  he  '  doffed  his  hat '  to  the  famous  trot- 
ting stallion  Marshland  Shales,  when  that  famous  old 
horse  was  exhibited  at  Tombland  Fair  on  the  Castle  Hill. 
We  meet  him  next  as  the  friend  of  Dr.  Bowring.  The 
letters  to  Bowring  we  must  leave  to  another  chapter, 
but  they  commence  in  1829  and  continue  through  1830 
and  1831.  Through  them  all  Borrow  shows  himself  alive 
to  the  necessity  of  obtaining  an  appointment  of  some 
kind,  and  meanwhile  he  is  hard  at  work  upon  his  trans- 
lations from  various  languages,  which,  in  conjunction 
with  Dr.  Bowring,  he  is  to  issue  as  Songs  of  Scandi- 
navia. Dr.  Knapp  thinks  that  in  1829  he  made  the 
translation  of  the  31emoi7^s  of  Vidocq,  which  appeared 
in  that  year  with  a  short  preface  by  the  translator.^ 
But  these  little  volumes  bear  no  internal  evidence  of 
Borrow's  style,  and  there  is  no  external  evidence  to 
support  the  assumption  that  he  had  a  hand  in  their 
publication.  His  occasional  references  to  Vidocq  are 
probably  due  to  the  fact  that  he  had  read  this  little 
book. 

I  have  before  me  one  very  lengthy  manuscript  of 
Borrow's  of  this  period.     It  is  dated  December  1829, 

*  I  quote  this  letter  in  another  chapter.  Mr.  Herbert  Jenkins  thinks 
{Life,  ch.  V.  p.  88)  that  Borrow  was  in  Paris  during  the  revolution  of  1830, 
because  of  a  picturesque  reference  to  the  war  correspondents  there  in  The 
Bible  in  Spain.  But  Borrow  never  hesitated  to  weave  little  touches  of 
romance  from  extraneous  writers  into  his  narratives,  and  may  have  done  so 
here.  I  have  visited  most  of  the  principal  capitals  of  the  world,  he  says  in 
The  Bible  in  Spain.  This  we  would  call  a  palpable  lie  were  not  so  much  of 
The  Bible  in  Spain  sheer  invention. 

2  Memoirs  of  Vidocq,  Principal  Agent  of  the  French  Police  until  1827,  and 
now  proprietor  of  the  paper  manufactory  at  St.  Mande.  Written  by  himself. 
Translated  from  the  French.  In  Four  Volumes.  Loudon  :  Whittaker, 
Treacher  and  Arnot,  Ave  Maria  Lane,  1829. 


EIGHT  YEARS  OF  VAGABONDAGE    137 

and  is  addressed,  '  To  the  Committee  of  the  Honour- 
able and  Praiseworthy  Association,  known  by  the 
name  of  the  Highland  Society.'  ^  It  is  a  proposal  that 
they  should  pubUsh  in  two  thick  octavo  volumes  a 
series  of  translations  of  the  best  and  most  approved 
poetry  of  the  ancient  and  modern  Scots-Gaelic  bards. 
Borrow  was  willing  to  give  two  years  to  the  project,  for 
which  he  pleads  '  with  no  sordid  motive. '  It  is  a 
dignified  letter,  which  will  be  found  in  one  of  Dr. 
Knapp's  appendices — so  presumably  Borrow  made  two 
copies  of  it.  The  offer  was  in  any  case  declined,  and 
so  Borrow  passed  from  disappointment  to  disappoint- 
ment during  these  eight  years,  which  no  wonder  he 
desired,  in  the  coming  years  of  fame  and  prosperity,  to 
veil  as  much  as  possible.  The  lean  years  in  the  lives 
of  any  of  us  are  not  those  upon  which  we  delight  to 
dwell,  or  upon  which  we  most  cheerfully  look  back." 

1  This  with  other  documents  I  am  about  to  present  to  the  Borrow  Museum, 
Norwich. 

2  In  1830  Borrow  had  another  disappointment.  He  translated  The  Sleep- 
ing Bard  from  the  Welsh.  This  also  failed  to  find  a  publisher.  It  was 
issued  in  1860,  under  which  date  we  discuss  it. 


CHAPTER    XIV 

SIR  JOHN  BOWRING 

*  Poor  George.  ...  I   wish  he  were  making  money. 
He  works  hard  and  remains  poor ' — thus  wrote  John 
Borrow  to  his  mother  in  1830  from  Mexico,  and  it  dis- 
poses in  a  measure  of  any  suggestion  of  mystery  with 
regard  to  five    of  those  years  that  he  wished  to  veil. 
They  were  not  spent,  it  is  clear,  in  rambling  in  the  East, 
as  he  tried  to  persuade  Colonel  Napier  many  years  later. 
They  were  spent  for  the  most  part  in  diligent  attempt 
at  the  capture  of  words,  in  reading  the  poetry  and  the 
prose   of  many  lands,  and  in  making  translations  of 
unequal  merit  from  these  diverse  tongues.     This  is  in- 
disputably brought  home  to  me  by  the  manuscripts  in 
my  possession,  supplemented  by  those  that  fell  to  Dr. 
Knapp.     These  manuscripts  represent  years  of  work. 
Borrow  has  been  counted  a  considerable  linguist,  and 
he  had  assuredly  a  reading  and  speaking  acquaintance 
with   a  great  many  languages.      But  this  knowledge 
was  acquired,  as  all  knowledge  is,  with  infinite  trouble 
and  patience.    I  have  before  me  hundreds  of  small  sheets 
of  paper  upon  which  are  written  English  words  and 
their  equivalents  in  some  twenty  or  thirty  languages. 
These  serve  to  show  that  Borrow  learnt  a  language  as 
a  small  boy  in  an  old-fashioned  system  of  education 
learns  his  Latin  or  French — by  writing  down  simple 
words — '  father,'  '  mother,' '  horse,' '  dog,'  and  so  on  with 

13S 


SIR  JOHN  BOWRING  139 

the  same  word  in  Latin  or  French  in  front  of  them. 
Of  course  Borrow  had  a  superb  memory  and  abundant 
enthusiasm,  and  so  he  was  enabled  to  add  one  language 
to  another  and  to  make  his  translations  from  such  books 
as  he  could  obtain,  with  varied  success.  I  believe  that 
nearly  all  the  books  that  he  handled  came  from  the 
Norwich  library,  and  when  Mrs.  Borrow  wrote  to  her 
elder  son  to  say  that  George  was  working  hard,  as  we 
may  fairly  assume,  from  the  reply  quoted,  that  she  did, 
she  was  recalling  this  laborious  work  at  translation  that 
must  have  gone  on  for  years.  We  have  seen  the  first 
fruit  in  the  translation  from  the  German — or  possibly 
from  the  French — of  Klinger's  Faustus  ;  we  have  seen 
it  in  Roynantic  Ballads  from  the  Danish,  the  Irish,  and 
the  Swedish.  Now  there  really  seemed  a  chance  of  a 
more  prosperous  utilisation  of  his  gift,  for  Borrow  had 
found  a  zealous  friend  who  was  prepared  to  go  forward 
with  him  in  this  work  of  giving  to  the  English  public 
translations  from  the  literatures  of  the  northern  nations. 
This  friend  was  Dr.  John  Bowring,  who  made  a  very 
substantial  reputation  in  his  day. 

Bowring  has  told  his  own  story  in  a  volume  oi  Auto- 
biographical Recollections^  a  singularly  dull  book  for  a 
man  whose  career  was  at  once  so  varied  and  so  full  of 
interest.  He  was  born  at  Exeter  in  1792  of  an  old 
Devonshire  family,  and  entered  a  merchant's  office  in 
his  native  city  on  leaving  school.  He  early  acquired 
a  taste  for  the  study  of  languages,  and  learnt  French 
from  a  refugee  priest  precisely  in  the  way  in  which 
Borrow  had  done.  He  also  acquired  Italian,  Spanish, 
German  and  Dutch,  continuing  with  a  great  variety 
of  other  languages.     Indeed,  only  the  very  year  after 

*  Autobiographical  Recollections  of  Sir  John  Bowring.  With  a  Brief  Memoir 
by  Lewin  B.  Bowring.     Henry  S.  King  and  Co.,  London,  1877. 


140    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Borrow    had    published    Faustus,    he    published    his 
A7icie7it  Poetry  and  Romances  of  Spain,  and  the  year 
after  Borrows  Romantic  Ballads  came  Bowring's  Servian 
Popular  Poetry.     With  such  interest  in  common  it  was 
natural  that  the  two  men  should  be  brought  together, 
but  Bowring  had  the  qualities  which  enabled  him  to 
make  a  career  for  himself  and  Borrow  had  not.      In 
1811,  as  a  clerk  in  a  London  mercantile  house,  he  was 
sent  to  Spain,  and  after  this  his  travels  were  varied.     He 
was  in  Russia  in   1820,  and   in  1822  was  arrested  at 
Calais  and  thrown  into  prison,  being  suspected  by  the 
Bourbon  Government  of  abetting  the  French  Liberals. 
Canning  as  Foreign  Minister  took  up  his  cause,  and 
he  was  speedily  released.     He  assisted  Jeremy  Bentham 
in  founding  The  Westminster  Review  in  1824.     Mean- 
while he  was  seeking  official  employment,  and  in  con- 
junction with  Mr.  Villiers,  afterwards  Earl  of  Clarendon, 
and  that  ambassador  to  Spain  who  befriended  Borrow 
when  he  was  in  the  Peninsula,  became  a  commissioner 
to  investigate  the  commercial  relations  between  England 
and  France.     After  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832  Bowring 
was   frequently  a  candidate  for  Parliament,  and  was 
finally  elected  for  Bolton  in  1841.     In  the  meantime  he 
assisted  Cobden   in   the  formation   of  the   Anti-Corn 
Law  League  in  1838.     Having  suffered  great  monetary 
losses  in  the  interval,  he  applied  for  the  appointment  of 
Consul  at  Canton,  of  which  place  he  afterwards  became 
Governor,  being  knighted  in  1854.     At  one  period  of 
his  career  at  Hong  Kong  his  conduct  was  made  the  sub- 
ject of  a  vote  of  censure  in  Parliament,  Lord  Palmerston, 
however,  warmly  defending  him.     Finally  returning  to 
England  in  1862,  he  continued  his  literary  work  with 
unfailing  zest.     He  died  at  Exeter,  in  a  house  very  near 
that  in  which  he  was  born,  in  1872.     His  extraordinary 


SIR  JOHN  BOWRING  141 

energies  cannot  be  too  much  praised,  and  there  is  no 
doubt  but  that  in  addition  to  being  the  possessor  of  great 
learning  he  was  a  man  of  high  character.  His  literary 
efforts  were  surprisingly  varied.  There  are  at  least 
thirty-six  volumes  with  his  name  on  the  title-page, 
most  of  them  unreadable  to-day  ;  even  such  works,  for 
example,  as  his  Visit  to  the  Philippine  Isles  and  Siam  and 
the  Siamese,  which  involved  travel  into  then  little-known 
lands.  Perhaps  the  only  book  by  him  that  to-day  com- 
mands attention  is  his  translation  of  Chamisso's  Petei' 
Schlemihl.  The  most  readable  of  many  books  by  him 
into  which  I  have  dipped  is  his  Servian  Popular  Poetry 
of  1827,  in  which  we  find  interesting  stories  in  verse 
that  remind  us  of  similar  stories  from  the  Danish  in 
Borrow's  Romantic  Ballads  published  only  the  year 
before.  The  extraordinary  thing,  indeed,  is  the  many 
points  of  likeness  between  Borrow  and  Bowring.  Both 
were  remarkable  linguists  ;  both  had  spent  some  time  in 
Spain  and  Russia  ;  both  had  found  themselves  in  foreign 
prisons.  They  were  alike  associated  in  some  measure 
with  Norwich — Bowring  through  friendship  with  Taylor 
— and  I  might  go  on  to  many  other  points  of  likeness 
or  of  contrast.  It  is  natural,  therefore,  that  the  penniless 
Borrow  should  have  welcomed  acquaintance  with  the 
more  prosperous  scholar.  Thus  it  is  that,  some  thirty 
years  later,  Borrow  described  the  introduction  by  Taylor: 

The  writer  had  just  entered  into  his  eighteenth  year,  when  he  met 
at  the  table  of  a  certain  Anglo-Gerraanist  an  individual,  apparently 
somewhat  under  thirty,  of  middle  stature,  a  thin  and  weaselly 
figure,  a  sallow  complexion,  a  certain  obliquity  of  vision,  and  a 
large  pair  of  spectacles.  This  person,  who  had  lately  come  from 
abroad,  and  had  published  a  volume  of  translations,  had  attracted 
some  slight  notice  in  the  literary  world,  and  was  looked  upon  as  a 
kind  of  lion  in  a  small  provincial  capital.     After  dinner  he  argued 


142    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

a  great  deal,  spoke  vehemently  against  the  Church,  and  uttered  the 
most  desperate  Radicalism  that  was  perhaps  ever  heard,  saying,  he 
hoped  that  in  a  short  time  there  would  not  be  a  king  or  queen  in 
Europe,  and  inveighing  bitterly  against  the  English  aristocracy, 
and  against  the  Duke  of  Wellington  in  particular,  whom  he  said, 
if  he  himself  was  ever  president  of  an  English  republic — an  event 
which  he  seemed  to  think  by  no  means  improbable — he  would  hang 
for  certain  infamous  acts  of  profligacy  and  bloodshed  which  he  had 
perpetrated  in  Spain.  Being  informed  that  the  writer  was  some- 
thing of  a  philologist,  to  which  ciiaracter  the  individual  in  question 
laid  great  pretensions,  he  came  and  sat  down  by  him,  and  talked 
about  languages  and  literature.  The  writer,  who  was  only  a  boy, 
was  a  little  frightened  at  first.^ 


'»■ 


The  quarrels  of  authors  are  frequently  amusing  but 
rarely  edifying,  and  this  hatred  of  Bowring  that 
possessed  the  soul  of  poor  Borrow  in  his  later  years  is 
of  the  same  texture  as  the  rest.  We  shall  never  know 
the  facts,  but  the  position  is  comprehensible  enough. 
Let  us  turn  to  the  extant  correspondence^  which,  as 
far  as  we  know,  opened  when  Borrow  paid  what  was 
probably  his  third  visit  to  London  in  1829  : 

To  Dr.  John  Bowring 

17  Great  Russell  Street,  Bloomsbury.     [Dec.  6,  1829.] 

My  dear  Sir, — Lest  I  should  intrude  upon  you  when  you  are 
busy,  I  write  to  inquire  when  you  will  be  unoccupied.  I  wish  to 
shew  you  my  translation  of  The  Death  of  Balder,  Ewald's  most 
celebrated  production,^  which,  if  you  approve  of,  you  will  perhaps 

^  The  Romany  Rye  Appendix,  ch.  xi. 

*  Kindly  placed  at  my  disposal  by  Mr.  Wilfred  J.  Bowring,  Sir  John 
Bowring's  grandson.  The  rights  which  I  hold  through  the  executors  of 
George  Borrow's  stepdaughter,  Mrs.  MacOubry,  over  the  Borrow  correspond- 
ence enable  me  to  publish  in  their  completeness  letters  which  three  previous 
biographers,  all  of  whom  have  handled  the  correspondence,  have  published 
mainly  in  fragments. 

3  The  manuscript  of  The  Death  of  Balder  came  into  the  hands  of  Mr. 
William  Jarrold  of  Norwich  through  Mr.  Webber  of  Ipswich,  who  purchased 


SIR  JOHN  BOWRING  143 

render  me  some  assistance  in  brimming  forth,  for  I  don't  know  many 
publishers.  I  think  this  will  be  a  proper  time  to  introduce  it  to 
the  British  public,  as  your  account  of  Danish  literature  will  doubt- 
less cause  a  sensation.  My  friend  Mr.  R.  Taylor  has  my  Kccmpe 
Viser,  which  he  has  read  and  approves  of ;  but  he  is  so  very  deeply 
occupied,  that  I  am  apprehensive  he  neglects  them  :  but  I  am 
unwilling  to  take  them  out  of  his  hands,  lest  I  offend  him.  Your 
letting  me  know  when  I  may  call  will  greatly  oblige, — Dear  Sir, 
your  most  obedient  servant,  George  Borrow. 

To  Dr.  John  Eowring 

17  Great  Russell  Street,  Bloomsbury.     \^Dec.  28,  1829.]* 

My  dear  Sir, — I  trouble  you  with  these  lines  for  the  purpose 
of  submitting  a  little  project  of  mine  for  your  approbation. 
When  I  had  last  the  pleasure  of  being  at  yours,  you  mentioned, 
that  we  might  at  some  future  period  unite  our  strength  in 
composing  a  kind  of  Danish  Anthology.  You  know,  as  well  as  I, 
that  by  far  the  most  remarkable  portion  of  Danish  poetry  is 
comprised  in  those  ancient  popular  productions  termed  Kcempe 
Viser,  which  I  have  translated.  Suppose  we  bring  forward  at 
once  the  first  volume  of  the  Danish  Anthology,  which  should 
contain  the  heroic  and  supernatural  songs  of  the  K.  V.,  which  are 
certainly  the  most  interesting ;  they  are  quite  ready  for  the  press 
with  the  necessary  notes,  and  with  an  introduction  which  I  am 
not  ashamed  of.  The  second  volume  might  consist  of  the  Historic 
songs  and  the  ballads  and  Romances,  this  and  the  third  volume, 
which  should  consist  of  the  modern  Danish  poetry,  and  should 
commence  with  the  celebrated '  Ode  to  the  Birds '  by  Morten  Borup, 
might  appear  in  company  at  the  beginning  of  next  season.  To 
Olenslager  should  be  allotted  the  principal  part  of  the  fourth 
volume ;  and  it  is  my  opinion  that  amongst  his  minor  pieces 
should  be  given  a  good  translation  of  his  Aladdin,  by  which  alone 

a  large  mass  of  Borrow  manuscripts  that  were  sold  at  Borrow's  death,  most 
of  which  were  re-purchased  by  Dr.  Knapp.  His  firm,  Jarrold  and  Sons,  issued 
The  Death  of  Balder ,  from  the  Danish  of  Johannes  Ewald,  in  1889. 

1  This  and  the  previous  letter  are  undated,  but  bear  the  careful  endorse- 
ment of  Dr.  John  Bowring,  as  he  then  was,  with  the  date  of  receipt,  presum- 
ably the  day  after  the  letters  were  written. 


144    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

he  has  rendered  his  claim  to  the  title  of  a  great  poet  indubitable. 
A  proper  Danish  Anthology  cannot  be  contained  in  less  than  4 
volumes,  the  literature  being  so  copious.  The  first  volume,  as  I 
said  before,  might  appear  instanter,  with  no  further  trouble  to 
yourself  than  writing,  if  you  should  think  fit,  a  page  or  two  of 
introductory  matter. — Yours  most  truly,  my  dear  Sir, 

George  Borrow. 

To  Dr.  John  Bowring 

17  Great  Russell  Street,  Deer.  31,  1829. 

My  dear  Sir, — I  received  your  note,  and  as  it  appears  that 
you  will  not  be  disengaged  till  next  Friday  evening  (this  day  week) 
I  will  call  then.  You  think  that  no  more  than  two  volumes  can 
be  ventured  on.  Well !  be  it  so !  The  first  volume  can  contain 
70  choice  Kcempe  V'lser ;  viz.  all  the  heroic,  all  the  supernatural 
ballads  (which  two  classes  are  by  far  the  most  interesting),  and  a 
few  of  the  historic  and  romantic  songs.  The  sooner  the  work  is 
advertised  the  better  ,ybr  I  am  terribly  afraid  of  being  forestalled  in 
the  Ka:mpe  Viser  by  some  of  those  Scotch  blackguards  who  affect  to 
translate  from  all  languages,  of  which  they  are  fully  as  ignorant 
as  Lockhart  is  of  Spanish.  I  am  quite  ready  with  the  first  volume, 
which  might  appear  by  the  middle  of  February  (the  best  time  in 
the  whole  season),  and  if  we  unite  our  strength  in  the  second,  I 
think  we  can  produce  something  worthy  of  fame,  for  we  shall  have 
plenty  of  matter  to  employ  talent  upon. — Most  truly  yours, 

George  Borrow. 

To  Dr.  John  Bowring 

17  Great  Russell  Street,  Bloojisburv,  Jany.  14,  1830. 

My  dear  Sir, — I  approve  of  the  prospectus  in  every  respect ; 
it  is  business-like,  and  there  is  nothing  flashy  in  it.  I  do  not  wish 
to  suggest  one  alteration.  I  am  not  idle  :  I  translated  yesterday 
from  your  volume  3  longish  Kaempe  Visers,  among  which  is  the 
'Death  of  King  Hacon  at  Kirkwall  in  Orkney,'  after  his  unsuccessful 
invasion  of  Scotland.  To-day  I  translated  '  The  Duke's  Daughter 
of  Skage,'  a  noble  ballad  of  400  lines.  When  I  call  again  I 
will,  with  your  permission,  retake  Tullin  and  attack  The  Surveyor. 


SIR  JOHN  BO  WRING  145 

Allow  me,  my  dear  Sir,  to  direct  your  attention  to  Olenschla^ger's 
St.  Hems  Aftenspil,  which  is  the  last  in  his  Digte  of  1803.  It 
contains  his  best  lyrics,  one  or  two  of  which  I  have  translated.  It 
might,  I  think,  be  contained  within  70  pages,  and  I  could  translate 
it  in  3  weeks.  Were  we  to  give  the  whole  of  it  we  should  gratify 
OIenschlaeger''s  wish  expressed  to  you,  that  one  of  his  larger  pieces 
should  appear.  But  it  is  for  you  to  decide  entirely  on  what  is  or 
what  is  7wt  to  be  done.  When  you  see  theforc'/gii  editor  I  should 
feel  much  obliged  if  you  would  speak  to  him  about  my  reviewing 
Tegner,  and  enquire  whether  a  good  article  on  Welsh  poetry 
would  be  received.  I  have  the  advantage  of  not  being  a  Welsh- 
man. I  would  speak  the  truth,  and  would  give  translations  of 
some  of  the  best  Welsh  poetry  ;  and  I  really  believe  that  my 
translations  would  not  be  the  worst  that  have  been  made  from  th 
Welsh  tongue. — Most  truly  yours,  G.  Borrow\ 

To  Dr.  John  Bowring 

17  Great  Russell  Street,  Bloomsbury,  Jtmy.  7,  1830. 

My  dear  Sir, — I  send  the  prospectus '  for  your  inspection  and 
for  the  correction  of  your  master  hand.  I  have  endeavoured  to 
assume  a  Danish  style,  I  know  not  whether  I  have  been  successful. 


1  i 


PROSPECTUS 


It  is  proposed  to  publish,  in  Two  Volumes  Octavo 
Price  to  Subscribers  £l.  Is.,  to  Non-Subscribers  £1,  4s. 

THE    SONGS    OF    SCANDINAVIA 

Translated  by 

Dr.  Bowring  and  Mr.  Borrow. 

Dedicated  to  the  King  of  Denmark,  by  permission  of  His  Majesty. 


The  First  Volume  will  contain  about  One  Hundred  Specimens  of  the 
Ancient  Popular  Ballads  of  North-\Vestern  Europe^  arranged  under  the 
heads  of  Heroic^  Supernatural,  Historical^  and  Domestic  Poems. 

The  Second  Volume  will  represent  the  Modern  School  of  Danish  Poetry, 
from  the  time  of  Tullin,  giving  the  most  remarkable  lyrical  productions  of 
Ewald,  Olenschlaeger,  Baggesen,  Ingemann,  and  many  others.' 

This  four-page  leaflet  contains  two  blank  pages  for  lists  of  subscribers, 
who  apparently  did  not  come,  and  the  project  seems  to  have  been  abandoned. 


116    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Alter,  I  pray  you,  whatever  false  logic  has  crept  into  it,  find  a 
remedy  for  its  incoherencies,  and  render  it  fit  for  its  intended 
purpose.  I  have  had  for  the  two  last  days  a  rising  headache 
which  has  almost  prevented  me  doing  anything.  I  sat  down  this 
morning  and  translated  a  hundred  lines  of  the  May-day ;  it  is  a 
fine  piece. — Yours  most  truly,  my  dear  Sir,        George  Borrow. 

To  Dr.  John  Bowring 

7  Museum  Street,  Jany.  1830. 

My  dear  Sir, — I  write  this  to  inform  you  that  I  am  at  No.  7 
Museum  St.,  Bloomsbury.  I  have  been  obliged  to  decamp  from 
Russell  St.  for  the  cogent  reason  of  an  execution  having  been  sent 
into  the  house,  and  I  thought  myself  happy  in  escaping  with  my 
things.  I  have  got  half  of  the  Manuscript  from  Mr.  Richard 
Taylor,  but  many  of  the  pages  must  be  rewritten  owing  to  their 
being  torn,  etc.  He  is  printing  the  prospectus,  but  a  proof  has 
not  yet  been  struck  off.  Send  me  some  as  soon  as  you  get  them.^ 
I  will  send  one  with  a  letter  to  H.  G. — Yours  eternally, 

G.  Borrow. 

To  Dr.  John  Bowring 

7  Museum  Street,  Jany.  25,  1830. 

My  dear  Sir, — I  find  that  you  called  at  mine,  I  am  sorry  that 
I  was  not  at  home.  I  have  been  to  Richard  Taylor,  and  you  will 
have  the  prospectuses  this  afternoon.  I  have  translated  Ferroe's 
'  Worthiness  of  Virtue '  for  you,  and  the  two  other  pieces  I 
shall  translate  this  evening,  and  you  shall  have  them  all  when  I 
come  on  Wednesday  evening.  If  I  can  at  all  assist  you  in  any- 
thing, pray  let  me  know,  and  I  shall  be  proud  to  do  it. — Yours 
most  truly,  G.  Borrow. 

To  Dr.  John  Bowring 

7  Museum  Street,  Fehy.  20,  1830. 
My  dear  Sir, — To  my  great  pleasure  I  perceive  that  the  books 
have  all  arrived  safe.     But  I  find  that,  instead  of  an  Icelandic 

^  The  prospectus,  ah-eady  quoted,  bears  the  imprint :  Printed  by  Richard 
Taylor,  Red  Lion  Court,  Fleet  Street. 


SIR  JOHN  BOWRING  147 

Grammar,  you  have  lent  me  an  Easay  on  the  origin  of  the  Icelandic 
LaTiguage,  which  I  here  return.  Thorlakson's  Grave-ode  is  super- 
latively fine,  and  I  translated  it  this  morning,  as  I  breakfasted. 
I  have  just  finished  a  translation  of  Baggesen's  beautiful  poem, 
and  1  send  it  for  your  inspection. — Most  sincerely  yours, 

Gkorge  Borrow. 

P.S. — When  I  come  we  will  make  the  modifications  of  this 
piece,  if  you  think  any  are  requisite,  for  I  have  various  readings 
in  my  mind  for  every  stanza.  I  wish  you  a  very  pleasant  journey 
to  Cambridge,  and  hope  you  will  procure  some  names  amongst  the 
literati. 

To  Dr.  John  Bowring 

7  Museum  SrnEET,  March  9,  1830. 

My  dear  Sir, — I  have  thought  over  the  Museum  matter  which 
we  were  talking  about  last  night,  and  it  appears  to  me  that  it 
would  be  the  very  thing  for  me,  provided  that  it  could  be  accom- 
plished. I  should  feel  obliged  if  you  would  deliberate  upon  the 
best  mode  of  proceeding,  so  that  when  I  see  you  again  I  may  have 
the  benefit  of  your  advice. — Yours  most  sincerely, 

George  Borrow. 

To  this  letter  Bowring  replied  the  same  day,  and 
his  reply  is  preserved  by  Dr.  Knapp.  He  promised  to 
help  in  the  Museum  project  '  by  every  sort  of  counsel 
and  creation.'  '  I  should  rejoice  to  see  you  nicked  in 
the  British  Museum,'  he  concludes. 

To  Dr.  John  Bowring 

7  Museum  StbeeTj  Friday  Evening,  May  21,  1830. 

My  dear  Sir, — I  shall  be  liappy  to  accept  your  invitation 
to  meet  Mr.  Grundtvig  to-morrow  morning.  As  at  present  no 
doubt  seems  to  be  entertained  of  Prince  Leopold's  accepting  the 
sovereignty  of  Greece,  would  you  have  any  objection  to  write  to 
him  concerning  me  ?  I  should  be  very  happy  to  go  to  Greece  in 
his  service.     I  do  not  wish  to  go  in  a  civil  or  domestic  capacity, 


148    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

and  I  have,  moreover,  no  doubt  that  all  such  situations  have  been 
long  since  filled  up  ;  I  wish  to  go  in  a  military  one,  for  which  I 
am  qualified  by  birth  and  early  habits.  You  might  inform  the 
Prince  that  I  have  been  for  years  on  the  Commander-in-Chiefs 
List  for  a  commission,  but  that  I  have  not  had  sufficient  interest 
to  procure  an  appointment.  One  of  my  reasons  for  wishing  to 
reside  in  Greece  is,  that  the  mines  of  Eastern  Literature  would 
be  acceptable  to  me.  I  should  soon  become  an  adept  in  Turkish, 
and  would  weave  and  transmit  to  you  such  an  anthology  as  would 
gladden  your  very  heart.  As  for  The  Songs  of  Scandinavia,  all 
the  ballads  would  be  ready  before  de})arture,  and  as  I  should  take 
books,  I  would  in  a  few  months  send  you  translations  of  the 
modern  lyric  poetry.  I  hope  this  letter  will  not  displease  you. 
I  do  not  write  it  from  fightiness,  but  from  thoughtfulness.  I  am 
uneasy  to  find  myself  at  four  and  twenty  drifting  on  the  sea  of 
the  world,  and  likely  to  continue  so. — Yours  most  sincerely, 

G.  Borrow. 

This  letter  is  printed  in  part  by  Dr.  Knapp,  and 
almost  in  its  entirety  by  Mr.  Herbert  Jenkins.  Dr. 
Knapp  has  much  sound  worldly  reflection  upon  its 
pathetic  reference  to  '  drifting  on  the  sea  of  the  world.' 
If  only,  he  suggests,  Borrow  had  not  received  that 
unwise  eulogy  from  Allan  Cunningham  about  his  '  ex- 
quisite Danish  ballads,'  if  only  he  had  listened  to 
Richard  Ford's  advice — which  came  too  late  in  any  case 
— '  Avoid  poetry  and  translations  of  poets ' — how  much 
better  it  would  have  been.  But  Borrow  had  not  the 
makings  in  him  of  a  'successful'  man,  and  we  who 
enjoy  his  writings  to-day  must  be  contented  with  the 
reflection  that  he  had  just  the  kind  of  life-experience 
which  gave  us  what  he  had  to  give.  Here  Borrow 
holds  his  place  among  the  poets — an  unhappy  race. 
In  any  case  the  British  Museum  appointment  was  not 
for  him,  nor  the  military  career.  Had  one  or  other 
fallen  to  his  lot,  we  might  have  had  much  literary  work 


SIR  JOHN  BOWRING  149 

of  a  kind,  but  certainly  not  Lavengro.     To  return  to 
the  correspondence ; 

To  Dr.  John  Bowring 

7  Museum  St.,  June  1,  1830. 
My  dear  Sir, — I  send  you  Hafhiir  and  Signe  to  deposit  in  the 
Scandinavian  Treasury,  and  I  should  feel  obliged  by  your  doing 
the  following  things. 

1.  Hunting  up  and  lending  me  your  Anglo-Saxon  Dictionary 
as  soon  as  possible,  for  Grundtvig  wishes  me  to  assist  him  in 
the  translation  of  some  Anglo-Saxon  Proverbs. 

2.  When  you  write  to  Finn  Magnussen  to  thank  him  for  his 
attention,  pray  request  him  to  send  the  FeeroisJia  Qtiida,  or  popular 
songs  of  Ferroe,  and  also  Erode?-  RuiCs  Historie,  or  the  History  of 
Friar  Rush,  the  book  which  Thiele  mentions  in  his  Folliesagn. — 
Yours  most  sincerely,  G.  Borrow. 

To  Dr.  John  Bowring 

7  Museum  Street,  June  7,  1830. 
My  dear  Sir, — I  have  looked  over  Mr.  Grundtvig's  manuscripts. 
It  is  a  very  long  affair,  and  the  language  is  Norman-Saxon.  £40 
would  not  be  an  extravagant  price  for  a  transcript,  and  so  they  told 
him  at  the  museum.  However,  as  I  am  doing  nothing  particular 
at  present,  and  as  I  might  learn  something  from  transcribing  it,  I 
would  do  it  for<£20.  He  will  call  on  you  to-morrow  morning,  and 
then  if  you  please  you  may  recommend  me.  The  character  closely 
resembles  the  ancient  Irish,  so  I  think  you  can  answer  for  my 
competency. — Yours  most  truly,  G.  Borrow. 

P.S. — Do  not  lose  the  original  copies  of  the  Danish  translations 
which  you  sent  to  the  Foreign  Quarterly,  for  I  have  no  duplicates. 
I  think  The  Roses  of  Ingemann  was  sent ;  it  is  not  printed ;  so  if 
it  be  not  returned,  we  shall  have  to  re-translate  it. 

To  Dr.  John  Bowring 

7  Museum  St.,  Sept.  14,  1830. 
My  dear  Sir, — I  return  you  the  Bohemian  books.    I  am  going 
to  Norwich  for  some  short  time  as  I  am  very  unwell,  and  hope 


150    GEORGE  BORKOW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

that  cold  bathing  in  October  and  November  may  prove  of  service 
to  me.  My  complaints  are,  I  believe,  the  offspring  of  ennui  and 
unsettled  prospects.  I  have  thoughts  of  attempting  to  get  into 
the  French  service,  as  I  should  like  prodigiously  to  serve  under 
Clausel  in  the  next  Bedouin  campaign.  I  shall  leave  London 
next  Sunday  and  will  call  some  evening  to  take  my  leave ;  I 
cannot  come  in  the  morning,  as  early  rising  kills  me. — Most 
sincerely  yours,  G.  Boruovv. 


To  Dr.  John  Bowring 

Willow  Lane,  Norwich,  Sept.  11,  1831. 

My  dear  Sir, — I  return  you  my  most  sincere  thanks  for  your 
kind  letter  of  the  2nd  inst.,  and  though  you  have  not  been  success- 
ful in  your  application  to  the  Belgian  authorities  in  my  behalf,  I 
know  full  well  that  you  did  your  utmost,  and  am  only  sorry  that 
at  my  instigation  you  attempted  an  impossibility.  The  Belgians 
seem  either  not  to  know  or  not  to  care  for  the  opinion  of  the 
great  Cyrus,  who  gives  this  advice  to  his  captains  :  '  Take  no  heed 
from  what  countries  ye  fill  up  your  ranks,  but  seek  recruits  as  ye  do 
horses,  not  those  particularly  who  are  of  your  own  country,  but 
those  of  merit.'  The  Belgians  will  only  have  such  recruits  as  are 
born  in  Belgium,  and  when  we  consider  the  heroic  manner  in  which 
the  native  Belgian  army  defended  the  person  of  their  new  sove- 
reign in  the  last  conflict  with  the  Dutch,  can  we  blame  them  for 
their  determination  ?  It  is  rather  singular,  however,  that,  resolved 
as  they  are  to  be  served  only  by  themselves,  they  should  have  sent 
for  50,000  Frenchmen  to  clear  their  country  of  a  handful  of 
Hollanders,  who  have  generally  been  considered  the  most  unwar- 
like  people  in  Europe,  but  who,  if  they  had  had  fair  play  given 
them,  would  long  ere  this  time  have  replanted  the  Orange  flag  on 
the  towers  of  Brussels,  and  made  the  Belgians  what  they  deserve 
to  be — hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water.  And  now,  my  dear 
Sir,  allow  me  to  reply  to  a  very  important  part  of  your  letter. 
You  ask  me  whether  I  wish  to  purchase  a  commission  in  the 
British  Service,  because  in  that  case  you  would  speak  to  the 
Secretary  at  War  about  me.  I  must  inform  you,  therefore,  that 
my  name  has  been  for  several  years  upon  the  list  for  the  purchase 


SIR  JOHN  BOWRING  151 

of  a  commission,  and  I  have  never  yet  had  sufficient   interest  to 
procure  an  appointment.     If  I  can  do  nothing  better  I  shall  be 
very  glad   to  purchase ;  but   I  will   pause  two   or  three  months 
before  I  call  upon  you  to  fulfil  your  kind  promise.     It  is  believed 
that  the  militias  will  be  embodied   in  order  to  be  sent  to  that 
unhappy  country  Ireland,  and,  provided  I  can  obtain  a  commission 
in  one  of  them  and  they  are  kept  in  service,  it  would  be  better 
than  spending  i?500  upon  one  in  the  line.     I  am  acquainted  with 
the  colonels  of  the  two  Norfolk  regiments,  and  I  dare  say  that 
neither  of  them  would  have  any  objection  to  receive  me.     If  they 
are  not  embodied  I  will  most  certainly  apply  to  you,  and  you 
may  say  when  you  recommend  me  that,  being  well  grounded  in 
Arabic,  and  having  some  talent  for  languages,  I   might  be  an 
acquisition  to  a  corps  in  one  of  our  Eastern  colonies,     I  flatter 
myself  that  I  could  do  a  great  deal  in  the  East  provided  I  could 
once  get  there,  either  in  a  civil  or  military  capacity.  There  is  much 
talk  at  present  about  translating  European  books  into  the  two 
great  languages,  the  Arabic  and  Persian.      Now  I  believe  that 
with  my  enthusiasm  for  those  tongues  I  could,  if  resident  in  the 
East,  become  in  a  year  or  two  better  acquainted  with  them  than 
any  European  has  been  yet,  and  more  capable  of  executing  such  a 
task.     Bear  this  in  mind,  and  if,  before  you  hear  from  me  again, 
you  should  have  any  opportunity  to  recommend  me  as  a  proper 
person  to  fill  any  civil  situation  in  those  countries,  or  to  attend 
any   expedition   thither,  I  pray  you   to  lay  hold  of  it,  and   no 
conduct  of  mine  shall  ever  give  you  reason  to  repent  of  it. — I 
remain,  my  dear  Sir,  your  most  obliged  and  obedient  servant, 

George  Borrow. 

PS. — Present  my  best  remembrances  to  Mrs.  Bowring  and  to 
Edgar,  and  tell  them  that  they  will  both  be  starved.  There  is  now 
a  report  in  the  street  that  twelve  corn-stacks  are  blazing  within 
twenty  miles  of  this  place.  I  have  lately  been  wandering  about 
Norfolk,  and  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  the  minds  of  the  peasantry  are 
in  a  horrible  state  of  excitement.  I  have  repeatedly  heard  men 
and  women  in  the  harvest-field  swear  that  not  a  grain  of  the  corn 
they  were  cutting  should  be  eaten,  and  that  they  would  as  lieve 
be  hanged  as  live.  I  am  afraid  all  this  will  end  in  a  famine  and  a 
rustic  war. 


152    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Borrow's  next  letter  to  Bowring  that  has  been  pre- 
served is  dated  1835  and  was  written  from  Portugal. 
With  that  I  will  deal  when  we  come  to  Borrow's 
travels  in  the  Peninsula.  Here  it  sufficeth  to  note 
that  during  the  years  of  Borrow's  most  urgent  need  he 
seems  to  have  found  a  kind  friend  if  not  a  very  zealous 
helper  in  the  '  Old  Radical '  whom  he  came  to  hate  so 
cordially. 


CHAPTER    XV 

BORROW   AND   THE   BIBLE   SOCIETY 

That  George  Borrow  should  have  become  an  agent 
for  the  Bible  Society,  then  in  the  third  decade  of  its 
flourishing  career,  has  naturally  excited  doubts  as  to 
his  moral  honesty.  The  position  was  truly  a  contrast 
to  an  earlier  ideal  contained  in  the  letter  to  his  Norwich 
friend,  Roger  Kerrison,  that  we  have  already  given,  in 
which,  with  all  the  zest  of  a  Shelley,  he  declares  that  he 
intends  to  live  in  London,  '  write  plays,  poetry,  etc., 
abuse  religion,  and  get  myself  prosecuted.'  But  that 
was  in  1824,  and  Borrow  had  suffered  great  tribulation 
in  the  intervening  eight  years.  He  had  acquired  many 
languages,  wandered  far  and  written  much,  all  too  little 
of  which  had  found  a  publisher.  There  was  plenty  of 
time  for  his  religious  outlook  to  have  changed  in  the 
interval,  and  in  any  case  Borrow  was  no  theologian. 
The  negative  outlook  of  '  Godless  Billy  Taylor,'  and 
the  positive  outlook  of  certain  Evangelical  friends  with 
whom  he  was  now  on  visiting  terms,  were  of  small 
account  compared  with  the  imperative  need  of  making 
a  living — and  then  there  was  the  passionate  longing  of 
his  nature  for  a  wider  sphere — for  travelling  activity 
which  should  not  be  dependent  alone  upon  the  vaga- 
bond's crust.  What  matter  if,  as  Harriet  Martineau 
— most  generous  and  also  most  malicious  of  women, 
with  much  kinship  with  Borrow  in  temperament — said, 

153 


154    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

that  his  appearance  before  the  public  as  a  devout  agent 
of  the  Bible  Society  excited  a  '  burst  of  laughter  from 
all  who  remembered  the  old  Norwich  days ' ;  what 
matter  if  another  '  scribbling  woman,'  as  Carlyle  called 
such  strident  female  writers  as  were  in  vogue  in  mid- 
Victorian  days — Frances  Power  Cobbe — thought  him 
'  insincere ' ;  these  were  unable  to  comprehend  the 
abnormal  heart  of  Borrow,  so  entirely  at  one  with 
Goethe  in  Wilhelm  Meister's  Wanderjahre : 

Bleibe  nicht  am  Boden  heften, 
Frisch  gewagt  und  frisch  hinaus  ! 
Kopf  und  Arm,  mit  heitern  Kraften, 
Ueberall  sind  sie  zu  Haus ; 
Wo  wir  uns  der  Sonne  freuen, 
Sind  wir  jede  Sorge  los  ; 
Dass  wir  uns  in  ihr  zerstreuen, 
Darum  ist  die  Welt  so  gross. ^ 

Here  was  Borrow's  opportunity  indeed.  Verily  I 
believe  that  it  would  have  been  the  same  had  it  been 
a  society  for  the  propagation  of  the  writings  of  Defoe 
amonof  the  Persians.  With  what  zest  would  Borrow 
have  undertaken  to  translate  31oll  Flanders  and 
Captain  Singleton  into  the  languages  of  Hafiz  and 
Omar  !  But  the  Bible  Society  was  ready  to  his  hand, 
and  Borrow  did  nothing  by  halves.  A  good  hater  and 
a  staunch  friend,  he  was  loyal  to  the  Bible  Society 
in  no  half-hearted  way,  and  not  the  most  pronounced 

*  Keep  uot  standiiigj  fixed  and  rooted, 
Briskly  venture,  briskly  roam  : 
Head  and  hand,  where'er  thou  foot  it, 

And  stout  heart,  are  still  at  home. 
In  each  land  the  sun  does  visit : 

We  are  gay  whate'er  betide. 
To  give  room  for  wandering  is  it. 
That  the  world  was  made  so  wide. 

— Carlyle's  translation. 


BORROW  AND  THE  BIBLE  SOCIETY    155 

quarrel  with  forces  obviously  quite  out  of  tune  with 
his  nature  led  to  any  real  slackening  of  that  loyalty.  In 
the  end  a  portion  of  his  property  went  to  swell  the 
Bible  Society's  funds. ^ 

When  Borrow  became  one  of  its  servants,  the  Bible 
Society  was  only  in  its  third  decade.  It  was  founded 
in  the  year  1804,  and  had  the  names  of  William 
Wilberforce,  Granville  Sharp,  and  Zachary  Macaulay 
on  its  first  committee.  To  circulate  the  authorised 
version  of  the  Bible  without  note  or  comment  was  the 
first  ideal  that  these  worthy  men  set  before  them  ; 
never  to  the  entire  satisfaction  of  the  great  printing 
organisations,  which  already  had  a  considerable  financial 
interest  in  such  a  circulation.  For  long  years  the 
words  '  Sold  under  cost  price '  upon  the  Bibles  of  the 
Society  excited  mingled  feelings  among  those  interested 
in  the  book  trade.^  The  Society's  first  idea  was  limited 
to  Bibles  in  the  EngHsh  tongue.  This  was  speedily 
modified.  A  Bible  Society  was  set  up  in  Nuremberg 
to  which  money  was  granted  by  the  parent  organisa- 
tion. A  Bible  in  the  Welsh  language  was  circulated 
broadcast  through  the  Principality,  and  so  the  move- 
ment grew.  From  the  first  it  had  one  of  its  principal 
centres  in  Norwich,  where  Joseph  John  Gurney's 
house  was  open  to  its  committee,  and  at  its  annual 
gatherings  at  Earlham  his  sister  Elizabeth  Fry  took  a 
leading  part,  while  Wilberforce,  Charles  Simeon,  the 
famous  preacher,  and  Legh  Richmond,  whose  Dah'y- 
mans  Daughter  Borrow  failed  to  appreciate,  were  of 

^  Through  the  will  of  his  stepdaughter,  Henrietta  MacOubrey. 

"  Although  the  Bible  Society  then  as  now  purchased  all  the  sheets  of  its 
Bibles  from  the  three  authorised  sources  of  production — the  King's  printers 
who  hold  a  patent^  and  the  universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  which  hold 
licences  to  print — these  exclusive  privileges  being  granted  in  order  that  the 
text  of  the  Bible  should  be  maintained  with  accuracy. 


156    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

the  company.  '  Uncles  Buxton  and  Cunningham  are 
here,'  we  find  one  of  Joseph  John  Gurney's  daughters 
writing  in  describing  a  Bible  Society  gathering.  This 
was  John  Cunningham,  rector  of  Harrow,  and  it  was 
his  brother  who  helped  Borrow  to  his  position  in 
connection  with  the  Society,  as  we  shall  see.  At 
the  moment  of  these  early  meetings  Borrow  is  but 
a  boy,  meeting  Joseph  Gurney  on  the  banks  of  the 
river  near  Earlham,  and  listening  to  his  discourse 
upon  angling.  The  work  of  the  Bible  Society  in 
Russia  may  be  said  to  have  commenced  when  one 
John  Paterson  of  Glasgow,  who  had  been  a  missionary 
of  the  Congregational  body,  went  to  St.  Petersburg 
during  those  critical  months  of  1812  that  Napoleon 
was  marching  into  Russia.  Paterson  indeed,  William 
Canton  tells  us,^  was  '  one  of  the  last  to  behold  the 
old  Tartar  wall  and  high  brick  towers '  and  other 
splendours  of  the  Moscow  which  in  a  month  or 
two  were  to  be  consumed  by  the  flames.  Paterson 
was  back  again  in  St.  Petersburg  before  the  French 
were  at  the  gates  of  Moscow,  and  it  is  noteworthy  that 
while  Moscow  was  burning  and  the  Czar  was  on  his 
way  to  join  his  army,  this  remarkable  Scot  was  sub- 
mitting to  Prince  Galitzin  a  plan  for  a  Bible  Society  in 
St.  Petersburg,  and  a  memorial  to  the  Czar  thereon  : 

The  plan  and  memorial  were  examined  by  the  Czar  on  the 
18th  (of  December) ;  with  a  stroke  of  his  pen  he  gave  his  sanction 
— '  So    be   it,  Alexander ' ;   and    as   he  wrote,  the   last    tattered 


1  Let  me  here  acknowledge  with  gratitude  my  indebteduess  to  that  fine 
work  The  History  of  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  (1904-10,  Murray)^  by 
William  Canton,  which  is  worthy  of  the  accomplished  author  of  The  Invisible 
Playmate.  An  earlier  history  of  the  Society,  by  the  Rev.  George  Browne, 
published  in  1859,  has  necessarily  been  superseded  by  Mr.  Canton's  book. 


BORROW  AND  THE  BIBLE  SOCIETY    157 

remnants  of  the  Grand  Army  struggled   across  the  ice  of  the 
Niemen.^ 

The  Society  was  formed  in  January  1813,  and  when 
the  Czar  returned  to  St.  Petersburg  in  1815,  after  the 
shattering  of  Napoleon's  power,  he  authorised  a  new 
transhition  of  the  Bible  into  modern  Russian.  From 
Russia  it  was  not  a  far  cry,  where  tlie  spirit  of 
evangelisation  held  sway,  to  Manchuria  and  to  China. 
To  these  remote  lands  the  Bible  Society  desired  to 
send  its  literature.  In  1822  the  gospel  of  St.  JMatthew 
was  printed  in  St.  Petersburg  in  JNIanchu.  Ten  years 
later  the  type  of  the  wliole  New  Testament  in  that 
language  was  lying  in  the  Russian  capital.  '  All  that 
was  required  was  a  Manchu  scholar  to  see  the  work 
through  the  press.'  ^  Here  came  the  chance  for  Borrow. 
At  this  period  there  resided  at  Oulton  Hall,  Suffolk, 
but  a  few  miles  from  Norwich,  a  family  of  the  name 
of  Skepper,  Edward  and  Anne  his  wife,  with  their 
two  children,  Breame  and  Mary.  Mary  married  in 
1817  one  Henry  Clarke,  a  lieutenant  in  the  Royal  Navy. 
He  died  a  few  months  afterwards  of  consumption.  Of 
this  marriage  there  was  a  posthumous  child,  Henrietta 
Mary,  born  but  two  months  after  her  father's  death. 
Mary  Clarke,  as  she  now  was,  threw  herself  with  zest 
into  all  the  religious  enthusiasms  of  the  locality,  and 
the  Rev.  Francis  Cunningham,  Vicar  of  St.  Margaret's, 
Lowestoft,  was  one  of  her  friends.  Borrow  had  met 
^lary  Clarke  on  one  of  his  visits  to  Lowestoft,  and  she 
had  doubtless  been  impressed  with  his  fine  presence,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  intelligence  and  varied  learning  of 
the  young  man.     The  following  note,  the  first  com- 

^  Cauton's  History  of  the  Bible  Society,  vol.  i.  195. 
^  Ibid.,  vol.  ii,  127. 


158    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

munication  I  can  find  from  Borrow  to  his  future  wife, 
indicates  how  matters  stood  at  the  time : 

To  Mrs.  Clarke 

St.  Giles,  Norwich,  22  October  1832. 
Dear  Madam, — According  to  promise  I  transmit  you  a  piece 
of  Oriental  writing,  namely  the  tale  of  Blue  Beard,  translated 
into  Turkish  by  myself.  I  wish  it  were  in  my  power  to  send  you 
something  more  worthy  of  your  acceptance,  but  I  hope  you  will 
not  disdain  the  gift,  insignificant  though  it  be.  Desiring  to  be 
kindly  remembered  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Skepper  and  the  remainder 
of  the  family, — I  remain,  dear  Madam,  your  most  obedient  humble 
servant,  George  Borrow. 

That  Borrow  owed  his  introduction  to  Mr.  Cunning- 
ham to  ]Mrs.  Clarke  is  clear,  although  Cunningham,  in 
his  letter  to  the  Bible  Society  urging  the  claims  of 
Borrow,  refers  to  the  fact  that  a  '  young  farmer '  in  the 
neighbourhood  had  introduced  him.  This  was  probably 
her  brother,  Breame  Skepper.  Dr.  Knapp  was  of  the 
opinion  that  Joseph  John  Gurney  obtained  Borrow  his 
appointment,  but  the  recently  published  correspond- 
ence of  Borrow  with  the  Bible  Society  makes  it  clear 
that  Cunningham  wrote — on  27th  December  1832 — 
recommending  Borrow  to  the  secretary,  the  Rev. 
Andrew  Brandram.  How  little  he  knew  of  Borrow  is. 
indicated  by  the  fact  that  he  referred  to  him  as  '  inde- 
pendent in  circumstances.'  Brandram  told  Caroline 
Fox  many  years  afterwards  that  Gurney  had  effected 
the  introduction,  but  this  was  merely  a  lapse  of 
memory.  In  fact  we  find  Borrow  asking  to  be  allowed 
to  meet  Gurney  before  his  departure.  In  any  case  he 
has  himself  told  us,  in  one  of  the  brief  biographies  of 
himself  that  he  wrote,  that  he  promptly  walked  to 
London,   covering  the   whole  distance   of  112    miles 


BORROW  AND  THE  BIBLE  SOCIETY   159 

in  twenty-seven  hours,  and  that  his  expenses  amounted 
to  5id.  laid  out  in  a  pint  of  ale,  a  half-pint  of  milk, 
a  roll  of  bread,  and  two  apples.  He  reached  London 
in  the  early  morning,  called  at  the  offices  of  the  Bible 
Society  in  Earl  Street,  and  was  kindly  received  by 
Andrew  Brandram  and  Joseph  Jowett,  the  two  secre- 
taries. He  was  asked  if  he  would  care  to  learn 
Manchu,  and  go  to  St.  Petersburg.  He  was  given  six 
months  for  the  task,  and  doubtless  also  some  money  on 
account.  He  returned  to  Norwich  more  luxuriously — 
by  mail  coach.  In  June  1833  we  find  a  letter  from 
Borrow  to  Jowett,  dated  from  Willow  Lane,  Norwich, 
and  commencing,  '  I  have  mastered  Manchu,  and  I 
should  feel  obliged  by  your  informing  the  committee 
of  the  fact,  and  also  my  excellent  friend,  JMr.  Brand- 
ram.'  A  long  reply  to  this  by  Jowett  is  among  my 
Borrow  Papers,  but  the  Bible  Society  clearly  kept 
copies  of  its  letters,  and  a  portion  of  this  one  has  been 
printed.^  It  shows  that  Borrow  went  through  much 
heart-burning  before  his  destiny  was  finally  settled. 
At  last  he  was  again  invited  to  London,  and  found 
himself  as  one  of  two  candidates  for  the  privilege  of 
going  to  Russia.  The  examination  consisted  of  a 
Manchu  hymn,  of  which  Borrow's  version  seems  to 
have  proved  the  more  acceptable,  and  he  afterwards 
printed  it  in  his  Targum.  Finally,  on  the  5th  of  July 
1833,  Borrow  received  a  letter  from  Jowett  offering 
him  the  appointment,  with  a  salary  of  £200  a  year 
and  expenses.  The  letter  contained  his  first  lesson  in 
the  then  unaccustomed  discipline  of  the  Evangelical 
vocabulary.  Borrow  had  spoken  of  the  prospect  of 
becoming  *  useful  to  the  Deity,  to  man,  and  to  himself.' 

^  In  Letters  from  George  Borrow  to  the  Bible  Society  (Hodder  and  Stougli- 
tou),  1911. 


160    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

'  Doubtless  you  meant,'  commented  Jowett,  *  the  pro- 
spect of  glorifying  God,'  and  Jowett  frankly  tells  him 
that  his  tone  of  confidence  in  speaking  of  himself  '  had 
alarmed  some  of  the  excellent  members  of  our  com- 
mittee.' Borrow  adapted  himself  at  once,  and  is  con- 
gratulated by  Jowett  in  a  later  communication  upon 
the  '  truly  Christian '  spirit  of  his  next  letter. 

By  an  interesting  coincidence  there  was  living  in 
Norwich  at  the  moment  when  Borrow  was  about  to 
leave  it,  a  man  who  had  long  identified  himself  with 
good  causes  in  Russia,  and  had  lived  in  that  country 
for  a  considerable  period  of  his  life.  John  Venning^ 
was  born  in  Totnes  in  1776,  and  he  is  buried  in  the 
Rosary  Cemetery  at  Norwich,  where  he  died  in  1858, 
after  twenty-eight  years'  residence  in  that  city.  He 
started  for  St.  Petersburg  four  years  after  John  Howard 
had  died,  ostensibly  on  behalf  of  the  commercial  house 
with  which  he  was  associated,  but  with  the  intention  of 
carrying  on  the  work  of  that  great  man  in  prison  re- 
form. Alexander  i.  was  on  the  throne,  and  he  made 
Venning  his  friend,  frequently  conversing  with  him 
upon  religious  subjects.  He  became  the  treasurer  of  a 
society  for  the  humanising  of  Russian  prisons  ;  but 
when  Nicholas  became  Czar  in  1825  Venning's  work 
became  more  difficult,  although  the  Emperor  was  sym- 
pathetic. Venning  returned  to  England  in  1830,  and 
thus  opportunely,  in  1833,  was  able  to  give  his  fellow- 
townsman  letters  of  introduction  to  Prince  Galitzin 
and  other  Russian  notables,  so  that  Borrow  was  able  to 
set  forth  under  the  happiest  auspices — with  an  entire 

1  See  Memoirs  of  John  Venning ,  Esq. ,  formerly  of  St.  Petertshuryh  and  late  of 
Norwich.  With  Numerous  Notices  from  his  Manuscripts  relative  to  the  Imperial 
Family  of  Russia.  By  ThuliaS.  Henderson.  London  :  Knight  and  Son,  1862. 
Borrow's  name  is  not  once  mentioned,  but  there  is  a  slight  reference  to  him 
on  pa^es  148  and  149. 


BORROW  AND  THE  BIBLE  SOCIETY    161 

change  of  conditions  from  those  eight  years  of  semi- 
starvation  that  he  was  now  to  leave  behind  him  for  ever. 
Borrow  left  London  for  St.  Petersburg  on  31st  July 
1833,  not  forgetting  to  pay  his  mother  before  he 
left  the  £17  he  had  had  to  borrow  during  his  time  of 
stress.  Always  devoted  to  his  mother,  Borrow  sent  her 
sums  of  money  at  intervals  from  the  moment  the 
power  of  earning  came  to  him.  We  shall  never  know, 
we  can  only  surmise  something  of  the  self-sacrificing 
devotion  of  that  mother  during  the  years  in  which 
Borrow  had  failed  to  find  remunerative  work. 
Wherever  he  wandered  there  had  always  been  a  home 
in  the  Willow  Lane  cottage.  It  is  probable  that 
much  the  greater  part  of  the  period  of  his  eight 
years  of  penury  was  spent  under  her  roof.  Yet  we 
may  be  sure  that  the  good  mother  never  once 
reproached  her  son.  She  had  just  that  touch  of 
idealism  in  her  character  that  made  for  faith  and 
hope.  In  any  case  never  more  was  Borrow  to  suffer 
penury,  or  to  be  a  burden  on  his  mother.  Henceforth 
she  was  to  be  his  devoted  care  to  her  dying  day. 


CHAPTER   XVI 

ST.  PETERSBURG  AND  JOHN  P.  HASFELD 

Borrow  travelled  by  way  of  Hamburg  and  Liibeck  to 
Travemiinde,  whence  he  went  by  sea  to  St.  Petersburg, 
where  he  arrived  on  the  twentieth  of  August  1833.  He 
was  back  in  London  in  September  1835,  and  thus  it 
will  be  seen  that  he  spent  two  years  in  Russia.  After 
the  hard  life  he  had  led,  everything  was  now  rose- 
coloured.  '  Petersburg  is  the  finest  city  in  the  world,' 
he  wrote  to  Mr.  Jowett ;  *  neither  London  nor  Paris  nor 
any  other  European  capital  which  I  have  visited  has 
sufficient  pretensions  to  enter  into  comparison  with  it 
in  respect  to  beauty  and  grandeur.'  But  the  striking 
thing  about  Borrow  in  these  early  years  was  his  capacity 
for  making  friends.  He  had  not  been  a  week  in  St. 
Petersburg  before  he  had  gained  the  regard  of  one, 
William  Glen,  who,  in  1825,  had  been  engaged  by  the 
Bible  Society  to  translate  the  Old  Testament  into 
Persian.  The  clever  Scot,  of  whom  Borrow  was  in- 
formed by  a  competent  judge  that  he  was  '  a  Persian 
scholar  of  the  first  water,'  was  probably  too  heretical  for 
the  Society  which  recalled  him,  much  to  his  chagrin. 
'  He  is  a  very  learned  man,  but  of  very  simple  and 
unassuming  manners,'  wrote  Borrow  to  Jowett.^     His 

*  Darlow's  George  Borrows  Letters  to  the  Bible  Society,  page  76.     There 
are  twenty  letters  written  by  Borrow  from  Russia  to  the  Bible  Society,  con- 
tained in  T.  H.  Darlow's  Letters  of  George  Borrow  to  the  British  and  Foreign 
16S 


ST.  PETERSBURG  AND  J.  P.  HASFELD    163 

version  of  the  Psalms  appeared  in  1830,  and  of  l\o- 
vej^bs  in  1831.  Thus  he  was  going  home  in  despair, 
but  seems  to  have  had  good  talk  on  the  way  with 
Borrow  in  St.  Petersburg.  In  1845  his  complete  Old 
Testament  in  Persian  appeared  in  Edinburgh.  This 
William  Glen  has  been  confused  with  another  WilHam 
Glen,  a  law  student,  who  taught  Carlyle  Greek,  but 
they  had  nothing  in  common.  Borrow  and  Carlyle 
could  not  possibly  have  had  friends  in  common. 
Borrow  was  drawn  towards  this  William  Glen  by  his 
enthusiasm  for  the  Persian  language.  But  Glen  de- 
parted out  of  his  life  very  quickly.  Hasfeld,  who 
entered  it  about  the  same  time,  was  to  stay  longer. 
Hasfeld  was  a  Dane,  now  thirty-three  years  of  age, 
who,  after  a  period  in  the  Foreign  Office  at  Copen- 
hagen, had  come  to  St.  Petersburg  as  an  interpreter 
to  the  Danish  Legation,  but  made  quite  a  good  income 
as  a  professor  of  European  languages  in  cadet  schools 
and  elsewhere.  The  English  language  and  literature 
would  seem  to  have  been  his  favourite  topic.  His 
friendship  for  Borrow  was  a  great  factor  in  Borrow's 
life  in  Russia  and  elsewhere.  If  Borrow's  letters  to 
Hasfeld  should  ever  turn  up,  they  will  prove  the  best 
that  he  wrote.  Hasfeld's  letters  to  Borrow  were 
preserved  by  him.  Three  of  them  are  in  my  possession. 
Others  were  secured  by  Dr.  Knapp,  who  made  far  too 
little  use  of  them.     They  are  all  written  in  Danish  on 

Bihle  Society,  several  of  which,  in  the  original  manuscripts^  are  in  my 
possession.  There  are  as  many  also  in  Kuapp's  Life  of  Borrow,  and  these 
last  are  far  more  interesting,  being  addressed  to  his  mother  and  other 
friends.  I  have  several  other  letters  concerned  with  Borrow's  Bible  Society 
work  in  Russia,  but  they  are  not  inspiring.  Borrow's  correspondence  with 
Hasfeld,  of  which  Knapp  gives  us  glimpses,  is  more  bracing,  and  the  two 
or  three  letters  from  that  admirable  Dane  that  are  in  my  collection  I  am 
glad  to  print  here. 


164.    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

foreign  notepaper :  flowery,  grandiloquent  productions 
we  may  admit,  but  if  we  may  judge  a  man  by  his 
correspondents,  we  have  a  revelation  of  a  more  human 
Borrow  than  the  correspondence  with  the  friends  at 
Earl  Street  reveals : 

St,  Petersburg^  6/18  November  1836. 
My  dear  Friend, — Much  water  has  run  through  the  Neva 
since  I  last  wrote  to  you,  my  last  letter  was  dated  5/17th  April ; 
the  last  letter  I  received  from  you  was  dated  Madrid,  23rd  May, 
and  I  now  see  with  regret  that  it  is  still  unanswered ;  it  is, 
however,  a  good  thing  that  I  have  not  written  as  often  to  you 
as  I  have  thought  about  you,  for  otherwise  you  would  have 
received  a  couple  of  letters  daily,  because  the  sun  never  sets  with- 
out you,  my  lean  friend,  entering  into  my  imagination.  I  received 
the  Spanish  letter  a  day  or  two  before  I  left  for  Stockholm,  and  it 
made  the  journey  with  me,  for  it  was  in  my  mind  to  send  you 
an  epistle  from  Svea's  capital,  but  there  were  so  many  petty 
hindrances  that  I  was  nearly  forgetting  myself,  let  alone  corre- 
spondence. I  lived  in  Stockholm  as  if  each  day  were  to  be  my 
last,  swam  in  champagne,  or  rested  in  girls'  embraces.  You 
doubtless  blush  for  me;  you  may  do  so,  but  don't  think  that 
that  conviction  will  murder  my  abnost  shameless  candour, 
the  only  virtue  which  I  possess,  in  a  superfluous  degree.  In 
Sweden  I  tried  to  be  lovable,  and  succeeded,  to  the  astonish- 
ment of  myself  and  everybody  else.  I  reaped  the  reward  on  the 
most  beautiful  lips,  which  only  too  often  had  to  complain  that  the 
fascinating  Dane  was  faithless  like  the  foam  of  the  sea  and  the  ice 
of  spring.  Every  wrinkle  which  seriousness  had  impressed  on 
my  face  vanished  in  joy  and  smiles;  my  frozen  heart  melted  and 
pulsed  with  the  rapid  beat  of  gladness ;  in  short,  I  was  not  recog- 
nisable. Now  I  have  come  back  to  my  old  wrinkles,  and  make 
sacrifice  again  on  the  altar  of  friendship,  and  when  the  incense, 
this  letter,  reaches  you,  then  prove  to  me  your  pleasure,  wherever 
you  may  be,  and  let  an  echo  of  friendship's  voice  resound  from 
Granada's  Alhambra  or  Sahara's  deserts.  But  I  know  that  you, 
good  soul,  will  write  and  give  me  great  pleasure  by  informing  me 
that  you  are  happy  and  well ;  when  I  get  a  letter  from  you  my 
heart  rejoices,  and  I  feel  as  if  I  were  happy,  and  that  is  what 


ST.  PETERSBURG  AND  J.  P.  HASFELD    165 

happiness  consists  of.  Therefore,  let  your  soldierlike  letters  march 
promptly  to  their  place  of  arms — paper — and  move  in  close 
columns  to  St.  Petersburg,  where  they  will  find  warm  winter 
quarters.  I  have  received  a  letter  from  my  correspondent  in 
London,  Mr.  Edward  Thomas  Allan,  No.  11  North  Audley  St. ; 
he  informs  me  that  my  manuscript  has  been  promenading  about, 
calling  on  publishers  without  having  been  well  received ;  some  of 
them  would  not  even  look  at  it,  because  it  smelt  of  Russian 
leather  ;  others  kept  it  for  three  or  six  weeks  and  sent  it  back 
with  '  Thanks  for  the  loan.'  They  probably  used  it  to  get  rid  of 
the  moth  out  of  their  old  clothes.  It  first  went  to  Longman  and 
Co.'s,  Paternoster  Row  ;  Bull  of  Hollis  St. ;  Saunders  and  Otley, 
Conduit  St. ;  John  Murray  of  Albemarle  St.,  who  kept  it  for 
three  weeks ;  and  finally  it  went  to  Bentley  of  New  Burlington 
St.,  who  kept  it  for  SIX  weeks  and  returned  it;  now  it  is  to  pay 
a  visit  to  a  Mr.  Colburn,  and  if  he  won't  have  the  abandoned 
child,  I  will  myself  care  for  it.  If  this  finds  you  in  London, 
which  is  quite  possible,  see  whether  you  can  do  anything  for  me 
in  this  matter.  Thank  God,  I  shall  not  buy  bread  with  the 
shillings  I  perhaps  may  get  for  a  work  which  has  cost  me  seventy 
nights,  for  I  cannot  work  during  the  day.      In  The  Athenceum^^ 

'  In  the  Athenceum  for  March  5,  183G,  there  is  a  short,  interestiiifj  letter, 
dated  from  St.  Petersburg,  sigued  J.  P.  H.  This  was  obviously  written  by 
Hasfeld.  '  Here  your  journal  is  found  in  every  well  furnished  library,'  he 
writes,  '  and  yet  not  a  passing-  word  do  you  ever  bestow  upon  us,'  and  then, 
to  the  extent  of  nearly  five  columns,  he  discourses  upon  the  present  state  of 
Russian  literature,  and  has  very  much  to  say  about  his  friend  George  Borrow : 

'Will  it  be  thought  ultra-barbarian  if  I  mention  that  Mr.  George 
Borrow  concluded,  in  the  autumn,  the  publication  of  the  New  Testament  in 
the  Mandchou  language?  Remember,  if  you  please,  that  he  was  sent  here 
for  the  express  purpose  by  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  of  London. 
The  translation  was  made  for  the  Society  by  Mr.  Lipoftsof,  a  gentleman  in 
the  service  of  the  Russian  Department  of  Foreign  Affairs,  who  has  spent  the 
greater  part  of  an  industrious  life  in  Peking  and  the  East.  I  can  only  say 
that  it  is  a  beautiful  edition  of  an  Oriental  work,  that  it  is  printed  with  great 
care  on  a  fine  imitation  of  Chinese  paper  made  on  purpose.  At  the  outset, 
Mr.  Borrow  spent  weeks  and  months  in  the  printing-office  to  make  the  com- 
positors acquainted  with  the  intricate  Mandchou  types,  and  that,  as  for  the 
contents,  I  am  assured  by  well-informed  persons,  that  this  translation  is 
remarkable  for  the  correctness  and  fidelity  with  which  it  has  been  executed.' 

Then    Hasfeld   goes    on  to   describe  Borrow's  small   volume,  Targum : 


166    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

No.  436,  issued  on  the  3rd  March  this  year,  you  will  find  an 
article  which  I  wrote,  and  in  which  you  are  referred  to ;  in  the 
same  paper  you  will  also  find  an  extract  from  my  translation.  I 
hope  that  article  will  meet  with  your  approbation.  Ivan  Semione- 
witch  sends  his  kind  regards  to  you.  I  dare  not  write  any  more,  for 
then  I  should  make  the  letter  a  double  one,  and  it  may  perhaps 
go  after  you  to  the  continent ;  if  it  reaches  you  in  England,  write 
AT  ONCE  to  your  sincere  friend,  J.  P.  Hasfeld. 

My  address  is,  Stieglitz  and  Co.,  St.  Petersburg. 

St.  Petersburg,  9th/2Ut  July  1842. 
Dear  Friend, — I  do  not  know  how  1  shall  begin,  for  you 
have  been  a  long  time  without  any  news  from  me,  and  the  fault 
is  mine,  for  the  last  letter  was  from  you ;  as  a  matter  of  fact,  I 
did  produce  a  long  letter  for  you  last  year  in  September,  but  you 
did  not  get  it,  because  it  was  too  long  to  send  by  post  and  I  had 
no  other  opportunity,  so  that,  as  I  am  almost  tired  of  the  letter, 
you  shall,  nevertheless,  get  it  one  day,  for  perhaps  you  will  find 
something  interesting  in  it ;  I  cannot  do  so,  for  I  never  like  to 
read  over  my  own  letters.  Six  days  ago  I  commenced  my  old 
hermit  life ;  my  sisters  left  on  the  3rd/15th  July,  and  are  now, 
with  God's  help,  in  Denmark.  They  left  with  the  French  steamer 
Amsterdam,  and  had  two  Russian  ladies  with  them,  who  are  to 
spend  a  few  months  with  us  and  visit  the  sea  watering-places. 
These  ladies  are  the  Misses  Koladkin,  and  have  learnt  English 
from  me,  and  became  my  sisters'  friends  as  soon  as  they  could 
understand  each  other.  My  sisters  have  also  made  such  good 
progress  in  your  language  that  they  would  be  able  to  arouse  your 
astonishment.  They  read  and  understand  everything  in  English, 
and  thank  you  very  much  for  the  pleasure  you  gave  them  with 
your  'Targum';  they  know  how  to  appreciate  'King  Christian 
stood  by  the  high  mast,'  and  everything  which  you  have  trans- 

*  The  exquisite  delicacy  with  which  he  has  caught  and  rendered  the  beauties 
of  his  well-chosen  originals/  he  says,  'is  a  proof  of  his  learning  and  genius. 
The  work  is  a  pearl  in  literature,  and,  like  pearls,  it  derives  value  from 
its  scarcity,  for  the  whole  edition  was  limited  to  about  a  hundred  copies.' 
Then  Hasfeld  gives  two  poems  from  the  book,  which  really  justify  his  eulogy, 
for  the  poetic  quality  of  Targum  has  not  had  justice  done  to  it  by  Sorrow's 
later  critics. 


ST.  PETERSBURG  AND  J.  P.  HASFELD    167 

lated  of  languages  with  which  they  are  acquainted.     They  have 
not  had  more  than  sixty  real  lessons  in  English.     After  they  had 
taken    ten    lessons,    I    began,   to    their   great    despair,    to    speak 
English,  and  only  gave  them  a  Danish  translation  when  it  was 
absolutely  necessary.     The  result  was  that  they  became  so  accus- 
tomed to  English  that  it  scarcely  ever  occurs  to  them  to  speak 
Danish  together;  when  one  cannot  get  away  from  me  one  must 
learn  from  me.     The  brothers  and  sisters  remaining  behind  are 
now   also  to   go  to  school  when  they  get   home,  for   they  have 
recognised  how  pleasant  it  is  to  speak  a  language  which  servants 
and  those  around  one  do  not  understand.     During  all  the  winter 
my  dearest  thought  was  how,  this  summer,  I  was  going  to  visit  my 
long,  good  friend,  who  was  previously  lean  and  who  is  now  fat,  and 
how  I  should  let  him  fatten  me  a  little,  so  as  to  be  able  to  with- 
stand  better  the  long  winter  in   Russia  ;   I   would   then   in   the 
autumn,  like  the  bears,  go  into  my  winter  lair  fat  and  sleek,  and 
of  all  these  romantic  thoughts  none  has  materialised,  but  I  have 
always  had  the  joy  of  thinking  them  and  of  continuing  them;  I 
can  feel  that  I  smile  when  such  ideas  run  through  my  mind.     I 
am  convinced  that  if  I  had  nothing  else  to  do  than  to  employ  my 
mind  with  pleasant  thoughts,  I  should  become  fat  on  thoughts 
alone.     The  principal  reason  why  this  real  pleasure  journey  had 
to  be  postponed,  was  that  my  eldest  sister,  Hanna,   became  ill 
about  Easter,  and  it  was  not  until  the  end  of  June  that  she  was 
well  enough   to   travel.     I   will   not   speak    about    the    confusion 
which  a  sick  lady  can  cause  in  a  bachelor's  house,  occasionally  I 
almost  lost  my  patience.     For  the  amount  of  roubles  which  that 
illness  cost  I  could  very  well  have  travelled  to  America  and  back 
again  to  St.  Petersburg ;  I  have,  however,  the  consolation  in  my 
reasonable  trouble  that  the  money  which  the  doctor  and  chemist 
have  received  was  well  spent.     The  lady  got  about  again  after  she 
had  caused  me  and  Augusta  just  as  much  pain,  if  not  more,  than 
she  herself  suffered.     Perhaps  you  know  how  amiable  people  are 
when  they  suffer  from  liver  trouble ;  I  hope  you  may  never  get  it. 
I  am  not  anxious  to  have  it  either,  for  you  may  do  what  the  devil 
you  like  for  such  persons,  and  even  then  they  are  not  satisfied. 
We  have  had  great  festivals   here   by   reason  of  the    Emperor''s 
marriage;  I  did  not  move  a  step  to  see  the  pageantry  ;  moreover, 
it  is  difficult  to  find  anvthing  fresh  in  it  which  would  afford  me 


168    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

enjoyment ;  I  have  seen  illuminations  and  fireworks,  the  only 
attractive  thing  there  was  must  have  been  the  King  of  Prussia  ; 
but  as  I  do  not  know  that  good  man,  I  have  not  very  great 
interest  in  him  either ;  nor,  so  I  am  told,  did  he  ask  for  me,  and 
he  went  away  without  troubling  himself  in  the  slightest  about 
me ;  it  was  a  good  thing  that  I  did  not  bother  him.         J.  P.  H. 

St.  Petersburg,  2Gth  April/8th  May  1858. 
Dear  Friend, — I  thank  you  for  your  friendly  letter  of  the 
12th  April,  and  also  for  the  invitation  to  visit  you.  I  am  thinking 
of  leaving  Russia  soon,  perhaps  permanently,  for  twenty-seven 
years  are  enough  of  this  climate.  It  is  as  yet  undecided  when  I 
leave,  for  it  depends  on  business  matters  which  must  be  settled, 
but  I  hope  it  will  be  soon.  What  I  shall  do  I  do  not  yet  know 
either,  but  I  shall  have  enough  to  live  on  ;  perhaps  I  shall  settle 
down  in  Denmark.  It  is  very  probable  that  I  shall  come  to 
London  in  the  summer,  and  then  I  shall  soon  be  at  Yarmouth 
with  you,  my  old  true  friend.  It  was  a  good  thing  that  you  at 
last  wrote,  for  it  would  have  been  too  bad  to  extend  your  dis- 
inclination to  write  letters  even  to  me.  The  last  period  one 
stays  in  a  country  is  strange,  and  I  have  many  persons  whom 
I  have  to  separate  from.  If  you  want  anything  done  in  Russia, 
let  me  know  promptly ;  when  I  am  in  movement  I  will  write, 
so  that  you  may  know  where  I  am,  and  what  has  become  of 
me.  I  have  been  ill  nearly  all  the  winter,  but  now  feel  daily 
better,  and  when  I  get  on  the  water  I  shall  soon  be  well.  We 
have  already  had  hot  and  thundery  weather,  but  it  has  now 
become  cool  again.  I  have  already  sold  the  greater  part  of 
my  furniture,  and  am  living  in  furnished  apartments  which  cost 
me  seventy  roubles  per  month ;  I  shall  soon  be  tired  of  that. 
I  am  expecting  a  letter  from  Denmark  which  will  settle  matters, 
and  then  I  can  get  ready  and  spread  my  wings  to  get  out  into  the 
world,  for  this  is  not  the  world,  but  Russia.  I  see  you  have 
changed  houses,  for  last  year  you  lived  at  No.  37.  With  kindest 
regards  to  your  dear  ones,  I  am,  dear  friend,  yours  sincerely, 

John  P.  Hasfeld.^ 

1  The  name  is  frequently  spelt '  Hasfeldt/  but  I  have  followed  the  spelling 
not  only  of  Hasfeld's  signature  in  his  letters  in  my  possession,  but  also  of 
the  printed  addressed  envelope  which  he  was  in  the  habit  of  forwarding  to 
his  friends  in  his  letters. 


CHAPTER    XVII 

THE  MANCHU  BIBLE-T ARGUM— THE  TALISMAN 

The  Bible  Society  wanted  the  Bible  to  be  set  up  in 
the  Manchu  language,  the  official  language  of  the 
Chinese  Court  and  Government.  A  Russian  scholar 
named  I^ipoftsof,  who  had  spent  twenty  years  in 
China,  undertook  in  1821  to  translate  the  New 
Testament  into  Manchu  for  £560.  Lipoftsof  had 
done  his  work  in  1826,  and  had  sent  two  manuscript 
copies  to  London.  In  1832  the  Rev.  William  Swan 
of  the  London  Missionary  Society  in  passing  through 
St.  Petersburg  discovered  a  transcript  of  a  large 
part  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament  in  Manchu, 
made  by  one  Pierot,  a  French  Jesuit,  many  years 
before.  This  transcript  was  unavailable,  but  a  second 
was  soon  afterwards  forthcoming  for  free  publication 
if  a  qualified  Manchu  scholar  could  be  found  to  see  it 
through  the  Press.  Mr.  Swan's  communication  of  these 
facts  to  the  Bible  Society  in  London  gave  Borrow  his 
opportunity.  It  was  his  task  to  find  the  printers,  buy 
the  paper,  and  hire  the  qualified  compositors  for  setting 
the  type.  It  must  be  admitted  Borrow  worked  hard 
for  his  £200  a  year.  First  he  had  to  ask  the  diplo- 
matists for  permission  from  the  Russian  Government, 
not  now  so  friendly  to  British  Missionary  zeal.  The 
Russian  Bible  Society  had  been  suppressed  in  1826. 
He  succeeded   here.     Then   he   had   to   continue   his 

169 


170    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

studies  in  the  Manchu  language.  He  had  written  from 
Norwich  to  Mr.  Jowett  on  9th  June  1833,  '  I  have 
mastered  Manchu,'  but  on  20th  January  1834  we  find 
him  writing  to  the  same  correspondent :  '  I  pay  about 
six  shillings,  English,  for  each  lesson,  which  I  grudge 
not,  for  the  perfect  acquirement  of  Manchu  is  one  of 
my  most  ardent  wishes.'^  Then  he  found  the  printers 
— a  German  firm,  Schultz  and  Beneze — who  probably 
printed  the  two  little  books  of  Borrow's  own  for  him  as 
a  '  make  weight.'  He  purchased  paper  for  his  Manchu 
translation  with  an  ability  that  would  have  done  credit 
to  a  modern  newspaper  manager.  Every  detail  of  these 
transactions  is  given  in  his  letters  to  the  Bible  Society, 
and  one  cannot  but  be  amused  at  Borrow's  explana- 
tion to  the  Reverend  Secretary  of  the  little  subter- 
fuges by  which  he  proposed  to  '  best '  the  godless  for 
the  benefit  of  the  godly  : 

Knowing  but  too  well  that  it  is  the  general  opinion  of  the 
people  of  this  country  that  Englishmen  are  made  of  gold,  and 
that  it  is  only  necessary  to  ask  the  most  extravagant  price  for  any 
article  in  order  to  obtain  it,  I  told  no  person,  to  whom  I  applied, 
who  I  was,  or  of  what  country  ;  and  I  believe  I  was  supposed  to 
be  a  German.^ 

Then  came  the  composing  or  setting  up  of  the  type  of 
the  book.  When  Borrow  was  called  to  account  by  his 
London  employers,  who  were  not  sure  whether  he  was 
wasting  time,  he  replied  :  *  I  have  been  working  in  the 
printing-office,  as  a  common  compositor,  between  ten 
and  thirteen  hours  every  day.'  In  another  letter 
Borrow  records  further  difficulties  with  the  printers 
after  the  composition  had  been  effected.      Several  of 

'  Darlow,  Letters  to  the  Bible  Society,  p.  32. 
»  Ibid.  p.  47. 


THE  MANCHU  BIBLE  171 

the  working  printers,  it  appears, '  went  away  in  disgust' 
Then  he  adds : 

I  was  resolved  '  to  do  or  die,'  and,  instead  of  distressing  and 
perplexing  the  Committee  with  complaints,  to  write  nothing  until 
I  could  write  something  perfectly  satisfactory,  as  I  now  can  ;  and 
to  bring  about  that  result  I  have  spared  neitiier  myself  nor  my  own 
money,  I  have  toiled  in  a  close  printing-office  the  whole  day, 
during  ninety  degrees  of  heat,  for  the  purpose  of  setting  an 
example,  and  have  bribed  people  to  work  whom  nothing  but 
bribes  would  induce  so  to  do.  I  am  obliged  to  say  all  this  in  self- 
justification.  No  member  of  the  Bible  Society  would  ever  have 
heard  a  syllable  respecting  what  I  have  undergone  but  for  the 
question,  '  What  has  Mr.  Borrow  been  about  ?  '  ^ 

It  is  not  my  intention  to  add  materially  to  the  letters 
of  Borrow  from  Russia  and  from  Spain  that  liave 
already  been  published,  although  many  are  in  my 
possession.  They  reveal  an  aspect  of  the  life  of  Borrow 
that  has  been  amply  dealt  with  by  other  biographers, 
and  it  is  an  aspect  that  interests  me  but  little.  Here, 
however,  is  one  hitherto  unpublished  letter  that  throws 
much  light  upon  Borrow's  work  at  this  time : 

To  the  Rev.  Andrew  Brandram 

St.  Petersburg,  18th  Oct.  1833. 
Reverend  Sir, — Supposing  that  you  will  not  be  displeased  to 
hear  how  I  am  proceeding,  1  have  taken  the  liberty  to  send  a  few 
lines  by  a  friend  ^  who  is  leaving  Russia  for  England.  Since  my 
arrival  in  Petersburg  I  have  been  occupied  eight  hours  every 
day  in  transcribing  a  Manchu  manuscript  of  the  Old  Testament 
belonging  to  Baron  Schilling,  and  I  am  happy  to  be  able  to  say 
that  1  have  just  completed  the  last  of  it,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Swan,  the 
Scottish  missionary,  having  before  my  arrival  copied  the  previous 

*  Darlow,  Letters  to  the  Bible  Society,  pp.  60,  61. 
2  ]vii..  Glen. 


172    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

part,  Mr.  Swan  departs  to  his  mission  in  Siberia  in  about  two 
months,  during  most  part  of  which  time  I  shall  be  engaged  in 
collating  our  transcripts  with  the  original.  It  is  a  great  blessing 
that  the  Bible  Society  has  now  prepared  the  whole  of  the  Sacred 
Scriptures  in  Manchu,  which  will  doubtless,  when  printed,  prove 
of  incalculable  benefit  to  tens  of  millions  who  have  hitherto  been 
ignorant  of  the  will  of  God,  putting  their  trust  in  idols  of  wood 
and  stone  instead  of  in  a  crucified  Saviour.  I  am  sorry  to  say  that 
this  country  in  respect  to  religion  is  in  a  state  almost  as  lament- 
able as  the  darkest  regions  of  the  East,  and  the  blame  of  this 
rests  entirely  upon  the  Greek  hierarchy,  who  discountenance  all 
attempts  to  the  spiritual  improvement  of  the  people,  who,  poor 
things,  are  exceedingly  willing  to  receive  instruction,  and,  notwith- 
standing the  scantiness  of  their  means  in  general  for  the  most  part, 
eagerly  buy  the  tracts  which  a  few  pious  English  Christians  cause 
to  be  printed  and  hawked  in  the  neighbourhood.  But  no  one  is 
better  aware,  Sir,  than  yourself  that  without  the  Scriptures  men  can 
never  be  brought  to  a  true  sense  of  their  fallen  and  miserable  state, 
and  of  the  proper  means  to  be  employed  to  free  themselves  from 
the  thraldom  of  Satan.  The  last  few  copies  which  remained  of 
the  New  Testament  in  Russian  were  purchased  and  distributed  a 
few  days  ago,  and  it  is  lamentable  to  be  compelled  to  state  that 
at  the  present  there  appears  no  probability  of  another  edition 
being  permitted  in  the  modern  language.  It  is  true  that  there 
are  near  twenty  thousand  copies  of  the  Sclavonic  bible  in  the  shop 
which  is  entrusted  with  the  sale  of  the  books  of  the  late  Russian 
Bible  Society,  but  the  Sclavonian  translation  is  upwards  of  a 
thousand  years  old,  having  been  made  in  the  eighth  century,  and 
differs  from  the  dialect  spoken  at  present  in  Russia  as  much  as 
the  old  Saxon  does  from  the  modern  English.  Therefore  it 
cannot  be  of  the  slightest  utility  to  any  but  the  learned,  that  is, 
to  about  ten  individuals  in  one  thousand.  I  hope  and  trust  that 
the  Almiglity  will  see  fit  to  open  some  door  for  the  illumination 
of  this  country,  for  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  if  vice  and  crime  be 
very  prevalent  here  when  the  people  are  ignorant  of  the  com- 
mandments of  God.  Is  it  to  be  wondered  that  the  people  follow 
their  every  day  pursuits  on  the  Sabbath  when  they  know  not  the 
unlawfulness  of  so  doing  ?  Is  it  to  be  wondered  that  they  steal 
when  only  in  dread  of  the  laws  of  the  country,  and  are  not  deterred 


THE  MANCHU  BIBLE  173 

by  the  voice  of  conscience  which  only  exists  in  a  few.  This 
accounts  for  their  profanation  of  their  Sabbath,  their  proneness  to 
theft,  etc.  It  is  only  surprising  that  so  much  goodness  is  to  be 
found  in  their  nature  as  is  the  case,  for  they  are  mild,  polite,  and 
obliging,  and  in  most  of  their  faces  is  an  expression  of  great  kind- 
ness and  benignity.  I  find  that  the  slight  knowledge  which  I 
possess  of  the  Russian  tongue  is  of  the  utmost  service  to  me  here, 
for  the  common  opinion  in  England  that  only  French  and  German 
are  spoken  by  persons  of  any  respectability  in  Petersburg  is  a 
great  and  injurious  error.  The  nobility,  it  is  true,  for  the  most 
part  speak  French  when  necessity  obliges  them,  that  is,  when  in 
company  with  foreigners  who  are  ignorant  of  Russian,  but  the 
affairs  of  most  people  who  arrive  in  Petersburg  do  not  lie  among 
the  nobility,  therefore  a  knowledge  of  the  language  of  the  country, 
unless  you  associate  solely  with  your  own  countrymen,  is  indis- 
pensable. The  servants  speak  no  language  but  their  native 
tongue,  and  also  nine  out  of  ten  of  the  middle  classes  of  Russians. 
I  might  as  well  address  Mr.  Lipdftsof,  who  is  to  be  my  coadjutor 
in  the  edition  of  the  New  Testament  (in  Manchu)  in  Hebrew  as  in 
either  French  or  German,  for  though  he  can  read  the  first  a  little 
he  cannot  speak  a  word  of  it  or  understand  when  spoken.  I  will 
now  conclude  by  wishing  you  all  possible  happiness.  I  have  the 
honour  to  be,  etc.,  George  Borrow. 

When  the  work  was  done  at  so  great  a  cost  of 
money ,^  and  of  energy  and  enthusiasm  on  the  part  of 
George  Borrow,  it  was  found  that  the  books  were  useless. 
Most  of  these  New  Testaments  were  afterwards  sent  out 
to  China,  and  copies  distributed  by  the  missionaries 
there  as  opportunities  offered.  It  was  found,  however, 
that  the  Manchus  in  China  were  able  to  read  Chinese, 
preferring  it  to  their  own  language,  which  indeed  had 
become  almost  confined  to  official  use.^     In  the  year 

1  The  Mauchu  version— i.e.  the  trauscript  of  Pierot's  MS.  of  the  Old 
Testament  and  1000  copies  of  Lipoffzof's  translation  of  the  New — cost  the 
Society  in  all  £2600.      Canton  :  History  of  the  Bible  Society,  vol.  ii.  p.  239. 

^  Darlow  :  Letters  to  the  Bible  Society,  p.  96. 


174    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

1859  editions  of  St.  Matthew  and  St.  Mark  were 
published  in  Manehu  and  Chinese  side  by  side, 
the  Manehu  text  being  a  reprint  of  that  edited  by 
Borrow,  and  these  books  are  still  in  use  in  Chinese 
Turkestan.  But  Borrow  had  here  to  suffer  one  of  the 
many  disappointments  of  his  life.  If  not  actually 
a  gypsy  he  had  all  a  gypsy's  love  of  wandering.  No 
impartial  reader  of  the  innumerable  letters  of  this 
period  can  possibly  claim  that  there  was  in  Borrow  any  of 
the  proselytising  zeal  or  evangelical  fervour  which  wins 
for  the  names  of  Henry  Martyn  and  of  David  Livingstone 
so  much  honour  and  sympathy  even  among  the  least 
zealous.  At  the  best  Borrow's  zeal  for  religion  was 
of  the  order  of  Dr.  Keate,  the  famous  headmaster  of 
Eton — '  Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart ...  if  you  are  not 
pure  in  heart,  by  God,  I  '11  flog  you  ! '  Borrow  had  got 
his  New  Testaments  printed,  and  he  wanted  to  distri- 
bute them  because  he  wished  to  see  still  more  of  the 
world,  and  had  no  lack  of  courage  to  carry  out  any 
well  defined  scheme  of  the  organisation  which  was  em- 
ploying him.  Borrow  had  thrown  out  constant  hints 
in  his  letters  home.  People  had  suggested  to  him,  he 
said,  that  he  was  printing  Testaments  for  which  he  would 
never  find  readers.  If  you  wish  for  readers,  they  had 
said  to  him, '  you  must  seek  them  among  the  natives  of 
Pekin  and  the  fierce  hordes  of  desert  Tartary.'  And  it 
was  this  last  most  courageous  thing  that  Borrow  pro- 
posed. Let  him,  he  said  to  Mr.  Jowett,  fix  his  head- 
quarters at  Kiachta  upon  the  northern  frontier  of  China. 
The  Society  should  have  an  agent  there : 

I  am  a  person  of  few  words,  and  will  therefore  state  without 
circumlocution  that  I  am  willing  to  become  that  agent.  I  speak 
Russ,  Manehu,  and  the  Tartar  or  broken  Turkish  of  the  Russian 
steppes,  and  have  also  some  knowledge  of  Chinese,  which  I  might 


THE  MANCHU  BIBLE  175 

easily  improve  at  Kiachta,  half  of  the  inhabitants  of  which  town 
are  Chinamen.  I  am  therefore  not  altogether  unqualified  for  such 
an  adventure.^ 

The  Bible  Committee  considered  this  and  other  plans 
through  the  intervening  months,  and  it  seems  clear  that 
at  the  end  they  would  have  sanctioned  some  form  of 
missionary  work  for  Borrow  in  the  Chinese  Empire ; 
but  on  1st  June  1835  he  wrote  to  say  that  the  Russian 
Government,  solicitous  of  maintaining  good  relations 
with  China,  would  not  grant  him  a  passport  across  Siberia 
except  on  the  condition  that  he  carried  not  one  single 
Manchu  Bible  thither.^  And  so  Borrow's  dreams  were 
left  unfulfilled.  He  was  never  to  see  China  or  the 
farther  East,  although,  because  he  was  a  dreamer  and 
like  his  hero,  Defoe,  a  bit  of  a  liar,  he  often  said  he  had. 
In  September  1835  he  was  back  in  England  awaiting  in 
his  mother's  home  in  Norwich  further  commissions  from 
his  friends  of  the  Bible  Society. 

•  ••••« 

Work  on  the  Manchu  New  Testament  did  not  en- 
tirely absorb  Borrow's  activities  in  St.  Petersburg.  He 
seems  to  have  made  a  proposition  to  another  organisa- 
tion, as  the  following  letter  indicates.  The  proposal 
does  not  appear  to  have  borne  any  fruit : 

Prayer  Book  and  Homily  Society, 
No.  4  Exeter  Hall,  London,  January  \Qth,  1835. 

Sir, — Your  letters  dated  July  and  November  17,  1834, 
and  addressed  to  the  Rev.  F.  Cunningham,  have  been  laid 
before  the  Committee  of  the  Prayer  Book  and  Homily  Society, 
who  have  agreed  to  print  the  translation  of  the  first  three  Homilies 
into  the  Russian  language  at  St.  Petersburg,  under  the  direction 
of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Biller,  so  soon  as  they  shall  have  caused  the  trans- 

*  Darlow  :  Letters  to  the  Bible  Society,  p.  65.  *  Ibid.,  p.  81. 


176    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

lation  to  undergo  a  thorough  revision,  and  shall  have  certified  the 
same  to  this  Society.  I  write  by  this  post  to  Mrs.  Biller  on  the 
subject.  In  respect  to  the  second  Homily  in  Manchu,  if  we 
rightly  understand  your  statement,  an  edition  of  five  hundred 
copies  may  be  sent  forth,  the  whole  expense  of  which,  including 
paper  and  printing,  will  amount  to  about  £12.  If  we  are  correct 
in  this  the  Committee  are  willing  to  bear  the  expense  of  five 
hundred  copies,  by  way  of  trial,  their  wish  being  this,  viz.  :  that 
printed  copies  should  be  put  into  the  hands  of  the  most  competent 
persons,  who  shall  be  invited  to  offer  such  remarks  on  the  trans- 
lation as  shall  seem  desirable ;  especially  that  Dr.  Morrison  of 
Canton  should  be  requested  to  submit  copies  to  the  inspection  of 
Manchu  scholars  as  he  shall  think  fit.  When  the  translation  has 
been  thoroughly  revised  the  Committee  will  consider  the  propriety 
of  printing  a  larger  edition.  They  think  that  the  plan  of  submit- 
ting copies  in  letters  of  gold  to  the  inspection  of  the  highest 
personages  in  China  should  probably  be  deferred  till  the  transla- 
tion has  been  thus  revised.  We  hope  that  this  resolution  will  be 
satisfactory  to  you ;  but  the  Committee,  not  wishing  to  prescribe 
a  narrower  limit  than  such  as  is  strictly  necessary,  have  directed 
me  to  say,  that  should  the  expense  of  an  edition  of  five  hundred 
copies  of  the  Homily  in  Manchu  exceed  £12,  they  will  still  be 
willing  to  meet  it,  but  not  beyond  the  sum  of  d£'15. 

Should  you  print  this  edition  be  pleased  to  furnish  us  with 
twenty-five  copies,  and  send  twenty-five  copies  at  the  least  to  Rev. 
Dr.  Morrison,  at  Canton,  if  you  have  the  means  of  doing  so;  if 
not,  we  should  wish  to  receive  fifty  copies,  that  we  may  send 
twenty-five  to  Canton.  In  this  case  you  will  be  at  liberty  to  draw  a 
bill  upon  us  for  the  money,  within  the  limits  specified  above,  in 
such  manner  as  is  most  convenient.  Possibly  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Biller 
may  be  able  to  assist  you  in  this  matter.  Believe  me,  dear  Sir, 
yours  most  sincerely,  C.  R.  Pritchett. 

Mr.  G.  Borrow. 

I  am  not  aware  whether  I  am  addressing  a  clergyman  or  a  lay- 
man, and  therefore  shall  direct  as  above.  Will  you  be  so  kind  as 
to  send  the  MS.  of  the  Russian  Homilies  to  Mrs.  Biller.? 


'  TARGUM  — '  THE  TALISMAN  '         177 

During  Borrow's  last  month  or  two  in  St.  Petersburg 
he  printed  two  thin  octavo  volumes  of  translations — 
some  of  them  verses  which,  undeterred  by  the  dis- 
heartening reception  of  earlier  efforts,  he  had  continued 
to  make  from  each  language  in  succession  that  he  had 
the  happiness  to  acquire,  although  most  of  the  poems 
are  from  his  old  portfolios.  These  little  books  were 
named  Targum  and  The  Talisman.  Dr.  Knapp  calls 
the  latter  an  appendix  to  the  former.  They  are 
absolutely  separate  volumes  of  verse,  and  I  reproduce 
their  title-pages  from  the  only  copies  that  Borrow  seems 
to  have  reserved  for  himself  out  of  the  hundred  printed 
of  each.  The  publishers,  it  will  be  seen,  are  the  German 
firm  that  printed  the  Manchu  New  Testament, 
Schultz  and  Beneze.  Borrow's  preface  to  Targum  is 
dated  'St.  Petersburg,  June  1,  1835.'  Here  in  Targum 
we  find  the  trial  poem  which  in  competition  with  a 
rival  candidate  had  won  him  the  privilege  of  going  to 
Russia  for  the  Bible  Society — The  Mountain  Chase. 
Here  also  among  new  verses  are  some  from  the  Arabic, 
the  Persian,  and  the  Turkish.  If  it  be  true,  as  his  friend 
Hasfeld  said,  that  here  was  a  poet  who  was  able  to 
render  another  without  robbing  the  garland  of  a  single 
leaf — that  would  but  prove  that  the  poetry  which 
Borrow  rendered  was  not  of  the  first  order.  Nor,  taking 
another  standard — the  capacity  to  render  the  ballad  with 
a  force  that  captures  '  the  common  people,' — can  we 
agree  with  William  Bodham  Donne,  who  was  delighted 
with  Targum  and  said  that  '  the  language  and  rhythm 
are  vastly  superior  to  Macaulay's  Lays  of  Ancient 
Rome.''  In  The  Talisman  we  have  four  little  poems 
from  the  Russian  of  Pushkin  followed  by  another  poem, 
The  Mermaid,  by  the  same  author.  Three  other  poems 
in  Russian  and  Polish  complete  the  booklet.     Borrow 

M 


178    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

left  behind  him  in  St.  Petersburg  with  his  friend,  Has- 
feld,  a  presentation  copy  for  Pushkin,  who,  when  he 
received  it,  expressed  regret  that  he  had  not  met  his 
translator  while  Borrow  was  in  St.  Petersburg. 


OB 

METBICAL  nUUISLATlONS 


h^o^s^ 


sorrow. 


,n(  nr>m  *»  tttmdiJ  I.  r*»  •t'lt  of  'J'  inslWnfofc' 


St.  PeTEBSit'BQ. 

i8a& 


THH- 

CiUsmatt. 

FROM  THE   RUSSfAN 

or 

with  other  Pieces. 

III!  Ml  II 

St.    Prtsrsbuko. 

.BinTBD    8T    •CBUtI    AND    BBHBtB. 

1835 


CHAPTER    XVIII 

THREE  VISITS  TO  SPAIN 

From  his  journey  to  Russia  Borrow  had  acquired 
valuable  experience,  but  nothing  in  the  way  of  fame, 
although  his  mother  had  been  able  to  record  in  a  letter 
to  St.  Petersburg  that  she  had  heard  at  a  Bible  Society 
gathering  in  Norwich  his  name  '  sounded  through  the 
hair  by  Mr.  Joseph  John  Gurney  and  Mr.  Cunningham, 
to  her  great  delight.  '  All  this  is  very  pleasing  to  me,' 
she  said,  '  God  bless  you ! '  Even  more  pleasing  to 
Borrow  must  have  been  a  letter  from  Mary  Clarke,  his 
future  wife,  who  was  able  to  tell  him  that  she  heard 
Francis  Cunningham  refer  to  him  as  *  one  of  the  most 
extraordinary  and  interesting  individuals  of  the  present 
day.'  But  these  tributes  were  not  all-satisfying  to  an 
ambitious  man,  and  this  Borrow  undoubtedly  was. 
His  Russian  journey  was  followed  by  five  weeks  of 
idleness  in  Norwich  varied  by  the  one  excitement  of 
attending  a  Bible  meeting  at  Oulton  with  the  Reverend 
Francis  Cunningham  in  the  chair,  when  '  Mr.  George 
Borrow  from  Russia'^  made  one  of  the  usual  con- 
ventional missionary  speeches,  Mary  Clarke's  brother, 
Breame  Skepper,  being  also  among  the  orators.  Borrow 
begged  for  more  work  from  the  Society.  He  urged 
the  desirability  of  carrying   out   its    own   idea   of  an 

^  Norfolk  Chronicle,  17th  October  1835. 

179 


180    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

investigation  in  Portugal  and  perhaps  also  in  Spain, 
and  hinted  that  he  could  write  a  small  volume  con- 
cerning what  he  saw  and  heard  which  might  cover  the 
expense  of  the  expedition.^  So  much  persistency 
conquered.  Borrow  sailed  from  London  on  6th  Nov- 
ember 1835,  and  reached  Lisbon  on  12th  November,  this 
his  first  official  visit  to  the  Peninsula  lasting  exactly 
eleven  months.  The  next  four  years  and  six  months 
were  to  be  spent  mainly  in  Spain."  Broadly  the  time 
divides  itself  in  the  following  fashion  : 

1st  Tour  (via  Lisbon),       2iid  Tour  (via  Cadiz),         3rd  Tour  (via  Cadiz), 
Nov.  1835  to  Oct.  1836.  Nov.  1836  to  Sept.  1838.  Dec.  1838  to  March  1840. 


Lisbon. 

Cadiz. 

Cadiz. 

Mafia. 

Lisbon. 

Seville. 

Evora. 

Seville. 

Madrid. 

Badajoz. 

Madrid. 

Gibraltar. 

Madrid. 

Salamanca. 
Coruna. 
Oviedo. 
Toledo. 

Tangier. 

*  Secretary  Samuel  Braudram,  writing  to  Borrow  from  the  office  of  the 
Bible  Society  in  October  1835,  gave  clear  indication  that  the  Society  was  un- 
certain how  next  to  utilise  Borrow's  linguistic  and  missionary  talents. 
Should  he  go  to  Portugal  or  to  China  was  the  question.  In  November  the 
committee  had  decided  on  Portugal,  although  they  thought  it  probable  that 
Borrow  would  'eventually  go  to  China.'  'With  Portugal  he  is  already 
acquainted,'  said  Mr.  Brandram  in  a  letter  of  introduction  to  the  Rev.  E. 
Whiteley,  the  British  Chaplain  in  Oporto.  So  that  Borrow  must  really  have 
wandered  into  Portugal  in  that  earlier  and  more  melancholy  apprentice- 
ship to  vagabondage  concerning  which  there  is  so  much  surmise  and  so  little 
knowledge.  Had  he  lied  about  his  acquaintance  with  Portugal  he  would 
certainly  have  been  '  found  out '  by  this  Portuguese  acquaintance,  with 
whom  he  had  much  social  intercourse. 

^  The  reader  who  finds  Borrow's  Bible  in  Spai7i  insufficient  for  his 
account  of  that  period,  and  I  am  not  of  the  number,  may  turn  to  the 
Letter.'!  of  George  Borroro  to  the  Bible  Society,  from  which  we  have  already 
quoted,  or  to  Mr.  Herbert  Jenkins's  Life  of  George  Borrow.     In  the  former 


THREE  VISITS  TO  SPAIN  181 

What  a  world  of  adventure  do  the  mere  names  of 
these  places  call  up.  Borrow  entered  the  Peninsula  at 
an  exciting  period  of  its  history.  Traces  of  the  Great 
War  in  which  Napoleon's  legions  faced  those  of 
Wellington  still  abounded.  Here  and  there  a  bridge 
had  disappeared,  and  some  of  Borrow's  strange  experi- 
ences on  ferry-boats  were  indirectly  due  to  the  results 
of  Napoleon's  ambition.^  Everywhere  there  was  still 
war  in  the  land.  Portugal  indeed  had  just  passed 
through  a  revolution.  The  partisans  of  the  infant 
Queen  Maria  ii.  had  been  fighting  with  her  uncle  Dom 
JMiguel  for  eight  years,  and  it  was  only  a  few  short 
months  before  Borrow  landed  at  I^isbon  that  Maria 
had  become  undisputed  queen.  Spain,  to  which 
Borrow  speedily  betook  himself,  was  even  in  a  worse 
state.  She  was  in  the  throes  of  a  six  years'  war. 
Queen  Isabel  ii.,  a  child  of  three,  reigned  over  a  chaotic 
country  with  her  mother  Dona  Christina  as  regent; 
her  uncle  Don  Carlos  was  a  formidable  claimant  to 
the  throne  and  had  the  support  of  the  absolutist  and 
clerical  parties.  Borrow's  political  sympathies  were 
always  in  the  direction  of  absolutism  ;  but  in  religion, 
although  a  staunch  Church  of  England  man,  he  was 
certainly  an  anti-clerical  one  in  Roman  Catholic  Spain. 


hook  the  greater  part  of  500  closely-printed  pages  is  taken  up  with  re- 
petitions of  the  story  as  told  in  The  Bible  in  Spain,  or  with  additions  which 
Borrow  deliberately  cancelled  in  the  work  in  question.  In  Mr.  Jenkins's 
Life  he  will  find  that  out  of  a  solid  volume  of  496  pages  exactly  212  are 
occupied  with  Borrow's  association  with  the  Peninsula  and  his  work  therein. 
To  the  enthusiast  who  desires  to  supplement  The  Bible  in  Spain  with  valuable 
annotation  I  cordially  commend  both  these  volumes. 

'  Who  that  has  visited  Spain  can  for  a  moment  doubt  but  that,  if 
Napoleon  had  really  conquered  the  Peninsula  and  had  been  able  to  put  his 
imprint  upon  it  as  he  did  upon  Italy,  the  Spain  of  to-day  would  have  become 
a  much  greater  country  than  it  is  at  present — than  it  will  be  in  a  few  short 
years. 


182    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

In  any  case  he  steered  judiciously  enough  between 
contending  factions,  describing  the  fanatics  of  either 
side  with  vigour  and  sometimes  with  humour.  Mr. 
Brandram's  injunction  to  Borrow  'to  be  on  his  guard 
against  becoming  too  much  committed  to  one  par- 
ticular party '  seems  to  have  been  unnecessary. 

Borrow's  three  expeditions  to  Spain  have  more  to 
be  said  for  them  than  had  his  journey  to  St.  Peters- 
burg. The  work  of  the  Bible  Society  was  and  is  at  its 
highest  point  of  human  service  when  distributing  either 
the  Old  or  the  New  Testament  in  Christian  countries, 
Spain,  England,  or  another.  Few  there  be  to-day  in 
any  country  who,  in  the  interests  of  civilisation, 
would  deny  to  the  Bible  a  wider  distribution.  In  a 
remote  village  of  Spain  a  Bible  Society's  colpor- 
teur, carrying  a  coloured  banner,  sold  me  a  copy  of 
Cipriano  de  Valera's  New  Testament  for  a  peseta. 
The  villages  of  Spain  that  Borrow  visited  could 
even  at  that  time  compare  favourably  morally  and 
educationally,  with  the  villages  of  his  own  county  of 
Norfolk  at  the  same  period.  The  morals  of  the  agri- 
cultural labourers  of  the  English  fen  country  eighty 
years  ago  were  a  scandal,  and  the  peasantry  read 
nothing;  more  than  half  of  them  could  not  read.  They 
had  not,  moreover,  the  humanising  passion  for  song 
and  dance  that  Andalusia  knew.  But  this  is  not  to 
deny  that  the  Bible  Society  under  Borrow's  instru- 
mentality did  a  good  work  in  Spain,  nor  that  they  did 
it  on  the  whole  in  a  broad  and  generous  way.  Borrow 
admits  that  there  was  a  section  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
clergy  '  favourably  disposed  towards  the  circulation  of 
the  Gospel,'^  and  the  Society  actually  fixed  upon  a 
Roman  Catholic  version  of  the  Spanish  Bible,  that  by 

*  The  Bible  in  Spain,  ch.  xlii. 


THREE  VISITS  TO  SPAIN  183 

Scio  de    San   Miguel,^  although    this  version    Borrow 
considered  a  bad  translation.     Much  has  been  said  about 
the  aim  of  the  Bible  Society  to  provide  the  Bible  with- 
out notes  or  comment — in  its  way  a  most  meritorious 
aim,  although  then  as  now  opposed  to  the  instinct  of 
a  large  number  of  the  priests  of  the  Roman  Church. 
It  is  true   that  their   attitude  does   not  in  any  way 
possess  the  sanction  of  the  ecclesiastical   authorities. 
It  may  be  urged,  indeed,  that  the  interpretation  of 
the  Bible  by  a  priest,  usually  of  mature  judgment,  and 
frequently  of  a  higher  education  than  the  people  with 
whom  he  is  associated,  is  at  least  as  trustworthy  as  its 
interpretation  at  the  hands  of  very  partially  educated 
young  women  and  exceedingly  inadequately  equipped 
young  men  who  to-day  provide  interpretation  and  com- 
ment in  so  many  of  the  Sunday  Schools  of  Protestant 
countries.^ 

Behold  George  Borrow,  then,  first  in  Portugal  and 
a  little  later  in  Spain,  upon  his  great  mission — avowedly 
at  first  a  tentative  mission — rather  to  see  what  were 
the  prospects  for  Bible  distribution  than  to  distribute 
Bibles.  But  Borrow's  zeal  knew  no  such  limitations. 
Before  very  long  he  had  a  shop  in  one  of  the  principal 
streets  of  Madrid — the  Calle  del  Principe — much  more 

1  The  Old  and  New  Testament,  in  ten  volumes,  were  first  issued  in  Spanish 
at  Valencia  in  1790-93.  When  in  Madrid  1  picked  up  on  a  second-hand 
bookstall  a  copy  of  a  cheap  Spanish  version  of  Scio's  New  Testament,  which 
bears  a  much  earlier  date  than  the  one  Borrow  carried.  It  was  published,  it 
will  be  noted,  two  years  before  Borrow  published  his  translation  of  Klinger's 
ribald  book  Faustus  : — 

'  El  Nuevo  Testamento,  Traducido  al  Espanol  de  la  Vulgata  Latina  por  el 
Rmo.  P.  Philipe  Scio  de  S.  Miguel.     Paris  :  En  la  Imprenta  de  J.  Smith,  1823.' 

2  This  kind  of  interpretation  is  not  restricted  to  the  youthful  Sunday 
School  teacher.  At  a  meeting  of  the  Bible  Society  held  at  Norwich — 
Borrow's  own  city — on  29th  May  1913,  Mrs.  Florence  Barclay,  the  author  of 
many  popular  novels,   thus  addressed    the  gathering.     I    quote  from   the 


184    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

in  the  heart  of  things  than  the  very  prosperous  Bible 
Society  of  our  day  ventures  upon/  Meanwhile  he  is  at 
present  in  Portugal  not  very  certain  of  his  movements, 
and  he  writes  to  his  old  friend  Dr.  Bowring  the  follow- 
ing letter  with  a  request  with  which  Bowring  complied, 
although  in  the  coldest  manner : 


Eastern  Daily  Press :  '  She  had  heard  sometimes  a  shallow  form  of  criticism 
which  said  that  it  was  impossible  that  in  actual  reality  any  man  should 
have  lived  and    breathed  three  days  and   three  nights  in  the  interior   of 
a  fish.     Might  she  remind  the  meeting  that  the  Lord   Jesus  Christ,  who 
never  made  mistakes,  said  Himself,  "As  Jonah  was  three  days  and  three 
nights  in  the  interior  of  the  sea  monster."     Please  note  that  in  the  Greek 
the  word  was  not  "  whale,"  but  "sea  monster."     And  then,  let  us  remember, 
that   we   were  told   that  the  Lord    God    had    prepared    the   great  fish    in 
order  that  it  should  swallow  Jonah.     She   did    suggest  that  if  mere   man 
nowadays  could  construct  a  submarine,  which  went  down  to  the  depths  of 
the  ocean  and  came  up  again  when  he  pleased,  it  did  not  require  very  much 
faith  to  believe  that  Almighty  God  could  specially  prepare  a  great  fish  which 
should  rescue  His  servant,  to  whom  He  meant  to  give  another  chance,  from 
the   depths   of   the  sea,    and    land    him    in   due   course   upon   the   shore. 
(Applause).'    These  crude  views,  which  ignored  the  symbolism  of  Nineveh 
as  a  fish,  now  universally  accepted  by  educated  people,  were  not,  however, 
endorsed  by  Dr.  Beechiug,  the  learned  Dean  of  Norwich,  who  in  the  same 
gathering  expressed  the  point  of  view  of  more  scholarly  Christians : — '  He 
would   not  distinguish  inspired  writing  from  fiction.     He  would  say  there 
could  be  inspired  fiction  just  as  well  as  inspired  facts,  and  he  would  point  to 
the  story  of  the  prodigal  son  as  a  wonderful  example  from  the  Bible  of 
inspired  fiction.     There  were  a  good  many  other  examples  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, and  he  had  not  the  faintest  doubt  that  the  story  of  Jonah  was  one. 
It  was  on  the  same  level  as  the  prodigal  son.     It  was  a  story  told  to  teach 
the  people  a  distinct  truth.' 

^  When  in  Madrid  in  May  1918  I  called  upon  Mr.  William  Summers,  the 
courteous  Secretary  of  the  Madrid  Branch  of  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible 
Society  in  the  Flor  Alta.  Mr.  Summers  informs  me  that  the  issues  of  the 
British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society,  Bibles  and  Testaments,  in  Spain  for  the 
past  three  years  are  as  follows  : 


Year. 

Bibles. 

Testaments. 

Portions. 

Total. 

1910, 

5,309 

8,971 

70,594 

84,874 

1911, 

5,66.5 

11,481 

79,525 

96,671 

1912, 

9,083 

11,842 

85,024 

105,949 

The  Calle  del  Principe  is  now  rapidly  being  pulled  down  and  new  build- 
ings taking  the  place  of  those  Borrow  knew. 


THREE  VISITS  TO  SPAIN  185 

To  Dr.  John  Eowring. 

EvoBA  IN  THE  Alemtejo,  27  Decr.  1835, 
Dear  Sir, — Pray  excuse  me  for  troubling  you  with  these  hnes. 
I  write  to  you,  as  usual,  for  assistance  in  my  projects,  convinced 
that  you  will  withhold  none  which   it  may  be  in  your  power  to 
afford,   more  especially  when  by  so   doing  you  will   perhaps  be 
promoting  the  happiness  of  our  fellow  creatures.     I  returned  from 
dear,  glorious   Russia   about    three   months    since,   after   having 
edited  there  the  Manchu  New  Testament  in  eight  volumes.     I  am 
now  in  Portugal,  for  the  Society  still  do  me  the  honour  of  employ- 
ing me.     For  the  last  six  weeks  I  have  been  wandering  amongst  the 
wilds  of  the  Alemtejo  and  have  introduced  myself  to  its  rustics, 
banditti,  etc.,  and  become  very  popular  amongst  them,  but  as  it 
is  much  more  easy  to  introduce  oneself  to  the  cottage  than  the 
hall  (though  I  am  not  entirely  unknown  in  the  latter),  I  want  you 
to  give  or  procure  me  letters  to  the  most  liberal  and  influential 
minds  of  Portugal.    I  likewise  want  a  letter  from  the  Foreign  Office 
to  Lord  De  Walden,  in  a  word,  I  want  to  make  what  interest  I 
can  towards  obtaining  the  admission  of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  into 
the  public  schools  of  Portugal  which  are  about  to  be  established. 
I  beg  leave  to  state  that  this  is  my  plan,  and  not  other  persons',  as 
I  was  merely  sent  over  to  Portugal  to  observe  the  disposition  of 
the  people,  therefore  I  do  not  wish  to  be  named  as  an  Agent  of 
the  B.S.,  but  as  a  person  who  has  plans  for  the  mental  improve- 
ment of  the  Portuguese ;  should  I  receive  these  letters  within  the 
space  of  six  weeks  it  will  be  time  enough,  for  before  setting  up  my 
machine  in  Portugal  I  wish  to  lay  the  foundation  of  something 
similar  in  Spain.     When  you  send  the  Portuguese  letters  direct 
thus  : 

Mr.  George  Borrow, 

to  the  care  of  Mr.  Wilby, 

Rua  Dos  Restauradores,  Lisbon. 
I  start  for  Spain  to-morrow,  and  I  want  letters  something 
similar  (there  is  impudence  for  you)  for  Madrid,  which  I  should  like 
to  have  as  soon  as  possible.  I  do  not  much  care  at  present  for  an 
introduction  to  the  Ambassador  at  Madrid,  as  I  shall  not 
commence  operations  seriously  in  Spain  until  I  have  disposed  of 
Portugal.     I  will  not  apologise  for  writing  to  you  in  this  manner, 


186    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

for  you  know  me,  but  I  will  tell  you  one  thing,  which  is  that  the 
letter  which  you  procured  for  me,  on  my  going  to  St.  Petersburg, 
from  Lord  Palmerston,  assisted  me  wonderfully.  I  called  twice  at 
your  domicile  on  my  return ;  the  first  time  you  were  in  Scotland,  the 
second  in  France,  and  I  assure  you  I  cried  with  vexation.  Re- 
member me  to  Mrs.  Bowring  and  God  bless  you.        G.  Borrow. 

P.S. — 1  am  told  that  Mendizdbal  is  liberal,  and  has  been  in 
England  ;  perhaps  he  would  assist  me. 

During  this  eleven  months'  stay  in  the  Peninsula 
Borrow  made  his  way  to  Madrid,  and  here  he  inter- 
viewed the  British  Minister,  Sir  George  Villiers,  after- 
wards fourth  Earl  of  Clarendon,  and  had  received  a 
quite  remarkable  encouragement  from  him  for  the 
publication  and  distribution  of  the  Bible.  He  also 
interviewed  the  Spanish  Prime  Minister,  Mendizabal, 
'  whom  it  is  as  difficult  to  get  nigh  as  it  is  to  approach 
the  North  Pole,'  and  he  has  given  us  a  picturesque 
account  of  the  interview  in  The  Bible  in  Spain.  It  was 
agreed  that  5000  copies  of  the  Spanish  Testament  were 
to  be  reprinted  from  Scio's  text  at  the  expense  of  the 
Bible  Society,  and  all  these  Borrow  was  to  handle  as 
he  thought  fit.  Then  Borrow  made  his  way  to  Granada, 
where,  under  date  30th  August  1836,  his  autograph 
may  be  read  in  the  visitors'  book  of  the  Alhambra : 

George  Sorrow  Norvicensis. 

Here  he  studied  his  friends  the  gypsies,  now  and  prob- 
ably then,  as  we  may  assume  from  his  Zincali,  the 
sordid  scum  on  the  hillside  of  that  great  city,  but  now 
more  assuredly  than  then  unutterably  demoralised  by 
the  numerous  but  curious  tourists  who  visit  this  rabble 
under  police  protection,  the  very  policeman  or  gendarme 
not  despising  a  peseta  for  his  protective  services. 
But  Borrow's  hobbies  included  the  Romanies  of 
every  land,  and  a  year  later  he  produced  and  published 


THREE  VISITS  TO  SPAIN  187 

a  gypsy  version  of  the  Gospel  of  St.  Luke.^  In 
October  1836  Borrow  was  back  in  England.  He  found 
that  the  Bible  Society  approved  of  him.  In  November 
of  the  same  year  he  left  London  for  Cadiz  on  his  second 


din  Mid  km     Of 

)|  VI  La^.,  ,  U   1  ^m^  \^)^^\  ^  ^  •  %  tat   t^ 

!  {fm,t\-  vloU   Jl  WhhJi      L-  m    f^  Ata    dtw,  IniU  L^. 

I^WLVKl      m-HMdl    tfrTMKt^ 


PORTION  OF  A  LETTER  FROM  GEORGE  BORROW  TO  THE 
REV.  SAMUEL  BRANDRAM. 

Written  from  Madrid,  loth  May  1838. 

^  Embeo  e  Majaro  Lucas.  El  Evangelio  negiin  S.  Lucas  traducido  al 
Rotnani  6  dialecto  de  los  Gitanos  de  EspaTta,  1857.  Two  later  copies  in  my 
possession  bear  on  their  title-pages  '  Lundra,  1871'  and  'Lundra^  1872.' 
But  the  Bible  Society  in  Spain  has  long  ceased  to  handle  or  to  sell  any  gypsy 
version  of  St.  Luke's  Gospel. 


188    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

visit  to  Spain.  The  journey  is  described  in  The  Bible 
in  Spain  ;  ^  but  here,  from  my  Borrow  Papers,  is  a  kind 
letter  that  Mr.  Brandram  wrote  to  Borrows  mother 
on  the  occasion : 

No.  10  East  Street,  Jany.  11,  1837. 
My  dear  Madam, — I  have  the  joyful  news  to  send  you  that 
your  son  has  again  safely  arrived  at  Madrid.  His  journey  we 
were  aware  was  exceedingly  perilous,  more  perilous  than  we  should 
have  allowed  him  to  take  had  we  sooner  known  the  extent  of  the 
danger.  He  begs  me  to  write,  intending  to  write  to  you  himself 
without  delay.  He  has  suffered  from  the  intense  cold,  but  nothing 
beyond  inconvenience.  Accept  my  congratulations,  and  my  best 
wishes  that  your  dear  son  may  be  preserved  to  be  your  comfort  in 
declining  years — and  may  the  God  of  all  consolation  himself  deign 
to  comfort  your  heart  by  the  truths  of  that  holy  volume  your  son 
is  endeavouring,  in  connection  with  our  Society,  to  spread  abroad. 
— Believe  me,  dear  Madam,  yours  faithfully,  A.  Biiandram. 

Mrs.  Borrow,  Norwich. 

A  brilliant  letter  from  Seville  followed  soon  after, 
and  then  he  went  on  to  Madrid,  not  without  many 
adventures.  'The  cold  nearly. killed  me,' he  said.  *I 
swallowed  nearly  two  bottles  of  brandy ;  it  affected 
me  no  more  than  warm  water.'  This  to  kindly  IMr. 
Brandram,  who  clearly  had  no  teetotaller  proclivities,  for 
the  letter,  as  he  said, '  filled  his  heart  with  joy  and  glad- 
ness.' Meanwhile  those  five  thousand  copies  of  the 
New  Testament  were  a-printing,  Borrow  superintending 
the  work  with  the  assistance  of  a  new  friend,  Dr.  Usoz. 
'  As  soon  as  the  book  is  printed  and  issued,'  he  tells  Mr. 
Brandram,  '  I  will  ride  forth  from  Madrid  into  the 
wildest  parts  of  Spain,  .  .  .'  and  so,  after  some  corres- 
pondence with  the  Society  which  is  quite  entertaining, 
he  did.  The  reader  of  The  Bible  in  Spain  will  note 
some  seventy  separate  towns  and  villages  that  Borrow 

^  And  in  Darlow's  Letters  of  George  Borrow  to  the  Bible  Society,  pp.  180-4. 


THREE  VISITS  TO  SPAIN  189 

visited,  not  without  countless  remarkable  adventures  on 
the  way.  '  1  felt  some  desire,'  he  says  in  The  Romany 
Rye,  *to  meet  with  one  of  those  adventures  which 
upon  the  roads  of  England  are  generally  as  plentiful  as 
blackberries  in  autumn.'  Assuredly  in  tliis  tour  of 
Spanish  villages  Borrow  met  with  no  lack  of  adventures. 
The  committee  of  the  Bible  Society  authorised  this 
tour  in  March  1837,  and  in  May  Borrow  started  off  on 
horseback  attended  by  his  faithful  servant,  Antonio. 
This  tour  was  to  last  five  months,  and  '  if  I  am  spared,' 
he  writes  to  his  friend  Hasfeld,  '  and  have  not  fallen  a 
prey  to  sickness,  Carlists,  banditti,  or  wild  beasts,  I 
shall  return  to  Madrid.'  He  hopes  a  little  later,  he 
tells  Hasfeld,  to  be  sent  to  China.  We  have  then 
a  glimpse  of  his  servant,  the  excellent  Antonio,  which 
supplements  that  contained  in  The  Bible  of  Spain,  '  He 
is  inordinately  given  to  drink,  and  is  of  so  quarrelsome 
a  disposition  that  he  is  almost  constantly  involved  in 
some  broil. '^  Not  all  his  weird  experiences  were  con- 
veyed in  his  letters  to  the  Bible  Society's  secretary. 
Some  of  these  letters,  however — the  more  highly 
coloured  ones — were  used  in  The  Bible  iii  Spain,  word  for 
word,  and  wonderful  reading  they  must  have  made  for 
the  secretary,  who  indeed  asked  for  more,  although,  with 
a  view  to  keeping  Borrow  humble — an  impossible  task — 
Mr.  Brandram  takes  occasion  to  say  '  Mr.  Graydon's 
letters,  as  well  as  yours,  are  deeply  interesting,'  Gray- 
don  being  a  hated  rival,  as  we  shall  see.  The  question 
of  L.S.D.  was  also  not  forgotten  by  the  assiduous 
secretary.  '  I  know  you  are  no  accountant,'  he  writes, 
*  but  do  not  forget  there  are  some  who  are,'  and  a 
financial  document  was  forwarded  to  Borrow  about 
this  time  which  we  reproduce  in  facsimile. 

*  Darlow,  Letters  of  George  Borrow  to  the  Bible  Society. 


190    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

But  now  Borrow  was  happy,  for  next  to  the  adven- 
tures of  five  glorious  months  in  the  villages  between 


j^; 


^^'  /&^M^.^^  '^/^^/'...^^^^^^^^^y^^^J^ 


^^ 


'fir ' 


.^j-^<' 


■/\ 


'!>  . 


/r 
/ 


r 


^ 


-T^ 


FACSIMILE  OF  AN  ACCOUNT  OF  GEORGE  BORROWS  EXPENSES  IN 
SPAIN  MADE  OUT  BY  THE  BIBLE  SOCIETY 


Madrid  and  Corufia  nothing  could  be  more  to  the 
taste  of  Borrow  than  a  good  wholesome  quarrel.  He 
was  imprisoned  by  order  of  the  Spanish  Government 


THREE  VISITS  TO  SPAIN  191 

and  released  on  the  intervention  of  the  British  Embassy.^ 
He  tells  the  story  so  graphically  in  The  Bible  in  Spain 
that  it  is  superfluous  to  repeat  it ;  but  here  he  does  not 
tell  of  the  great  quarrel  with  regard  to  Lieutenant 
Graydon  that  led  him  to  attack  that  worthy  zealot  in 
a  letter  to  the  Bible  Society.  This  attack  did  indeed 
cause  the  Society  to  recall  Graydon,  whose  zealous 
proclamation  of  anti-Romanism  must  however  have 
been  more  to  the  taste  of  some  of  its  subscribers  than 
Borrows  trimming  methods.  Moreover,  Graydon 
worked  for  love  of  the  cause  and  required  no  salary, 
which  must  always  have  been  in  his  favour.  Borrow 
was  ten  days  in  a  Madrid  prison,  and  there,  as  ever,  he 
had  extraordinary  adventures  if  we  may  believe  his 
own  narrative,  but  they  are  much  too  good  to  be  torn 
from  their  context.  Suffice  to  say  here  that  in  the  actual 
correspondence  we  find  breezy  controversy  between 
Borrow  and  the  Society.  Borrow  thought  that  the 
secretary  had  called  the  accuracy  of  his  statements  in 
question  as  to  this  or  that  particular  in  his  conduct. 
Ever  a  fighter,  he  appealed  to  the  British  Embassy  for 
confirmation  of  his  word,  and  finally  Mr.  Brandram 
suggested  he  should  come  back  to  England  for  a  time 
and  talk  matters  over  with  the  members  of  the  com- 
mittee. In  the  beginning  of  September  1838  Borrow 
was  again  in  England,  when  he  issued  a  lengthy  and 
eloquent  defence  of  his  conduct  and  a  report  on  '  Past 
and  Future  Operations  in  Spain.' ^      In  December  of 

^  The  story  of  all  the  negotiations  concerning  this  imprisonment  and 
release  is  told  by  Dr.  Knapp  {Life,  vol.  i.  pp.  279-297),  and  is  supplemented 
by  Mr.  Herbert  Jenkins  by  valuable  documents  from  the  Foreign  Office 
Papers  at  the  Record  Office. 

2  Printed  by  Mr.  Darlow  in  Letters  of  George  Borrow  to  the  Bible  Society, 
pp.  359-379. 


192    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

the  same  year  Borrow  was  again  on  his  way  to  Cadiz 
upon  his  third  and  last  visit  to  Spain. 

Borrow  reached  Cadiz  on  this  his  last  visit  on  31st 
December  1838,  and  went  straight  to  Seville,  where  he 
arrived  on  2nd  January  1839.  Here  he  took  a  beautiful 
little  house,  '  a  paradise  in  its  way,'  in  the  Plazuela  de 
la  Pila  Seca,  and  furnished  it — clearly  at  the  expense  of 
his  friend  Mrs.  Clarke  of  Oulton,  who  must  have  sent 
him  a  cheque  for  the  purpose.  He  had  been  corres- 
ponding regularly  with  JNlrs.  Clarke,  who  had  told  him 
of  her  difficulties  with  lawyers  and  relatives,  and  Borrow 
had  advised  her  to  cut  the  Gordian  knot  and  come  to 
Spain.  But  Mrs.  Clarke  and  her  daughter,  Henrietta, 
did  not  arrive  from  England  until  June. 

In  the  intervening  months  Borrow  had  been  work- 
ing more  in  his  own  interests  than  in  those  of  the 
patient  Bible  Society,  for  he  started  to  gather  material 
for  his  Gypsies  of  Spain,  and  this  book  was  for  the 
most  part  actually  written  in  Seville.  It  was  at  this 
period  that  he  had  the  many  interviews  with  Colonel 
Elers  Napier  that  we  quote  at  length  in  our  next 
chapter. 

A  little  later  he  is  telling  Mr.  Brandram  of  his 
adventure  with  the  blind  girl  of  Manzanares  who  could 
talk  in  the  Latin  tongue,  which  she  had  been  taught 
by  a  Jesuit  priest,  an  episode  which  he  retold  in 
21ie  Bible  in  Spain.  '  When  shall  we  hear,'  he  asks, 
'  of  an  English  rector  instructing  a  beggar  girl  in  the 
language  of  Cicero  ? '  To  which  Mr.  Brandram,  who 
was  rector  of  Beckenham,  replied  '  Cui  bono  ? '  The 
letters  of  this  period  are  the  best  that  he  ever  wrote, 
and  are  incorporated  more  exactly  than  the  earlier  ones 
in  The  Bible  in  Spain. 

Four  letters  to  his  mother  within  the  period  of  his 


WHERE  BORROW  LIVED  IN  MADRID 


THE  CALLE  DEL  PRINCIPE,  MADRID 


The  house  of  Maria  Diaz  in  the 
Calle  del  Santiago.   Borrow  occu- 
pied   the   third   floor   front.       A 
laundry  is  now  in  possession. 


Where   Borrow   opened   a   shop 

for  the  sale  of  New  Testaments, 

which  was  finally  closed  by  order 

of  the  Government. 


192 


THREE  VISITS  TO  SPAIN  193 

second  and  third  Spanish  visits  may  well  be  presented 
together  here  from  my  Borrow  Papers : 

To  Mrs.  Ann  Borrow 

Madrid,  July  21,  1838. 
My  dkau  Mother, — I  am  in  perfect  health  though  just  returned 
from  a  long  expedition  in  which  I  have  been  terribly  burnt  by  the 
sun.     In  about  ten   days   I   sold  nearly  a  thousand  Testaments 
among  the  labourers  of  the  plains  and  mountains  of  Castille  and 
La  Mancha.     Everybody  in  Madrid  is  wondering  and  saying  such 
a  thing  is  a  miracle,  as  I  have  not  entered  a  town,  and  the  country 
people  are  very  poor  and  have  never  seen  or  heard  of  the  Testa- 
ment before.     But  I  confess  to  you  that  I  dislike  my  situation  and 
begin   to   think  that   I  have  been   deceived  ;  the  B.S.  have  had 
another  person  on  the  sea-coast  who  has  nearly  ruined  their  cause 
in  Spain  by  circulating  seditious  handbills  and  tracts.     The  con- 
sequence has  been  that  many  of  my  depots  have  been  seized  in 
which  I  kept  my  Bibles  in  various  parts  of  the  country,  for  the 
government  think  that  he  is  employed  by  me  ;  I  told  the  B.S.  all 
along  what  would  be  the  consequence  of  employing  this  man,  but 
they  took  huff' and  would  scarce  believe  me,  and  now  all  my  words 
are  come  true  ;  I  do  not  blame  the  government  in  the  slightest 
degree  for  what  they  have  done  in  many  points,  they  have  shown 
themselves  to  be  my  good  friends,  but  they  have  been  driven  to 
the  step  by  the  insane  conduct  of  the  person  alluded  to.     I  told 
them  frankly  in  my  last  letter  that  I  would  leave  their  service  if 
they  encouraged  him ;  for  I  will  not  be  put  in  prison  again  on  his 
account,  and  lose  another  servant  by  the  gaol  fever,  and  then 
obtain  neither  thanks  nor  reward.     I  am  going  out  of  town  again 
in  a  day  or  two,  but  I  shall  now  write  very  frequently,  therefore 
be  not  alarmed  for  I  will  run  into  no  danger.     Burn  this  letter 
and  speak  to  no  one  about  it,  nor  any  others  that  I  may  send. 
God  bless  you,  my  dear  mother.  G.  B. 

To  Mrs.  Ann  Borrow,  Willow  Lane,  St.  Giles, 
Norwich  (Inglaterra) 

Madrid,  August  5,  1838. 
My  dear  Mother, — I  merely  write  this  to  inform  you  that  I 


194    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

am  back  to  Madrid  from  my  expedition.  I  have  been  very 
successful  and  have  sold  a  great  many  Testaments.  Indeed  all  the 
villages  and  towns  within  thirty  miles  have  been  supplied.  In 
Madrid  itself  I  can  do  nothing  as  I  am  closely  watched  by  order 
of  the  government  and  not  permitted  to  sell,  so  that  all  I  do  is  by 
riding  out  to  places  where  they  cannot  follow  me.  I  do  not  blame 
them,  for  they  have  much  to  complain  of,  though  nothing  of  me, 
but  if  the  Society  will  countenance  such  men  as  they  have  lately 
done  in  the  South  of  Spain  they  must  expect  to  reap  the  conse- 
quences. It  is  very  probable  that  I  may  come  to  England  in  a 
little  time,  and  then  you  will  see  me ;  but  do  not  talk  any  more 
about  yourself  being  '  no  more  seen,'  for  it  only  serves  to  dishearten 
me,  and  God  knows  I  have  enough  to  make  me  melancholy  already. 
I  am  in  a  great  hurry  and  cannot  write  any  more  at  present. — I 
remain,  dear  mother,  yours  affectionately, 

George  Borrow. 

To  Mrs.  Ann  Borrow 

(No  date.) 
My  dear  Mama, — As  I  am  afraid   that  you  may  not  have 
received  my  last  letter  in  consequence  of  several  couriers  having 
been  stopped,  I  write  to  inform  you  that  I  am  quite  well. 

I  have  been  in  some  difficulties.  I  was  selling  so  many  Testa- 
ments that  the  priests  became  alarmed,  and  prevailed  on  the 
government  to  put  a  stop  to  my  selling  any  more ;  they  were 
likewise  talking  of  prosecuting  me  as  a  witch,  but  they  have 
thought  better  of  it.  I  hear  it  is  very  cold  in  England,  pray  take 
care  of  yourself,  I  shall  send  you  more  in  a  few  weeks. — God  bless 
you,  my  dear  mama,  G.  B. 

It  was  in  the  middle  of  his  third  and  last  visit  to 
Spain  that  Borrow  wrote  this  next  letter  to  his  mother 
which  gives  the  first  suggestion  of  the  romantic  and 
happy  termination  of  his  final  visit  to  the  Peninsula : 

To  Mrs.  Ann  Borrow 

Seville,  Spain,  April  27,  1839. 
My  dear  Mother, — I  should  have  written  to  you  before  I  left 
Madrid,  but  I  had  a  long  and  dangerous  journey  to  make,  and  I 


THREE  VISITS  TO  SPAIN  195 

wished  to  get  it  over  before  saying  anything  to  you.  I  am  now 
safely  arrived,  by  the  blessing  of  God,  in  Seville,  which,  in  my 
opinion,  is  the  most  delightful  town  in  the  world.  If  it  were  not 
a  strange  place  with  a  strange  language  I  know  you  would  like  to 
live  in  it,  but  it  is  rather  too  late  in  the  day  for  you  to  learn 
Spanish  and  accommodate  yourself  to  Spanish  ways.  Before  I  left 
Madrid  I  accomplished  a  great  deal,  having  sold  upwards  of  one 
thousand  Testaments  and  nearly  five  hundred  Bibles,  so  that  at 
present  very  few  remain  ;  indeed,  not  a  single  Bible,  and  I  was 
obliged  to  send  away  hundreds  of  people  who  wanted  to  purchase, 
but  whom  I  could  not  supply.  All  this  has  been  done  without 
the  slightest  noise  or  disturbance  or  anything  that  could  give  cause 
of  displeasure  to  the  government,  so  that  I  am  now  on  very  good 
terms  with  the  authorities,  though  they  are  perfectly  aware  of 
what  I  am  about.  Should  the  Society  think  proper  to  be  guided 
by  the  experience  which  I  have  acquired,  and  my  knowledge  of  the 
country  and  the  people,  they  might  if  they  choosed  sell  at  least 
twelve  thousand  Bibles  and  Testaments  yearly  in  Spain,  but  let 
them  adopt  or  let  any  other  people  adopt  any  other  principle  than 
that  on  which  I  act  and  everything  will  miscarry.  All  the  diffi- 
culties, as  I  told  my  friends  the  time  I  was  in  England,  which  I 
have  had  to  encounter  were  owing  to  the  faults  and  imprudencies 
of  other  people,  and,  I  may  say,  still  are  owing.  Two  Methodist 
schoolmasters  have  lately  settled  at  Cadiz,  and  some  little  time 
ago  took  it  into  their  heads  to  speak  and  preach,  as  I  am  informed, 
against  the  Virgin  Mary;  information  was  instantly  sent  to 
Madrid,  and  the  blame,  or  part  of  it,  was  as  usual  laid  to  me ; 
however,  I  found  means  to  clear  myself,  for  I  have  powerful  friends 
in  Madrid,  who  are  well  acquainted  with  my  views,  and  who  inter- 
ested themselves  for  me,  otherwise  I  should  have  been  sent  out  of 
the  country,  as  I  believe  the  two  others  have  been  or  will  be.  I 
have  said  nothing  on  this  point  in  my  letters  home,  as  people 
would  perhaps  say  that  I  was  lukewarm,  whereas,  on  the  contrary, 
I  think  of  nothing  but  the  means  best  adapted  to  promote  the 
cause ;  but  I  am  not  one  of  those  disposed  to  run  a  ship  on  a  rock 
when  only  a  little  skill  is  necessary  to  keep  her  in  the  open  sea, 

I  hope  Mrs.  Clarke  will  write  shortly ;  tell  her  if  she  wishes 
for  a  retreat  I  have  found  one  here  for  her  and  Henrietta.  I  have 
my  eye  on  a  beautiful  one  at  fifteen  pence  a  day,     I  call  it  a  small 


196    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

house,  though  it  is  a  paradise  in  its  way,  having  a  stable,  court- 
yard, fountain,  and  twenty  rooms.  She  has  only  to  write  to  my 
address  at  Madrid  and  I  shall  receive  the  letter  without  fail. 
Henrietta  had  better  bring  with  her  a  Spanish  grammar  and 
pocket  dictionary,  as  not  a  word  of  English  is  spoken  here.  The 
house-dog — perhaps  a  real  English  bulldog  would  be  better — like- 
wise had  better  come,  as  it  may  be  useful.  God  bless  you  there- 
fore for  the  present,  my  dearest  mother.  George  Borrow. 

Borrow  had  need  of  friends  more  tolerant  of  his 
idiosyncrasies  than  the  '  powerful  friends '  he  describes 
to  his  mother,  for  the  Secretary  of  the  Bible  Society 
was  still  in  a  critical  mood  : — 

You  narrate  your  perilous  journey  to  Seville,  and  say  at  the 
beginning  of  the  description,  '  my  usual  wonderful  good  fortune 
accompanying  us.'  This  is  a  mode  of  speaking  to  which  we  are 
not  accustomed — it  savours,  some  of  our  friends  would  say,  a  little 
of  the  profane.^ 

On  29th  July  1839  Borrow  was  instructed  by  his 
Committee  to  return  to  England,  but  he  was  already 
on  the  way  to  Tangier,  whence  in  September  he  wrote 
a  long  and  interesting  letter  to  Mr.  Brandram,  which 
was  afterwards  incorporated  in  The  Bible  in  Spain. 
He  had  left  Mrs.  Clarke  and  her  daughter  in  Seville, 
and  they  joined  him  at  Gibraltar  later.  We  find  him 
en  route  for  Tangier,  staying  two  days  with  Mr.  John 
M.  Brackenbury,  the  British  Consul  in  Cadiz,  who 
found  him  a  most  fascinating  man. 

His  Tangier  life  is  fully  described  in  l^'he  Bible  in 
Spain.  Here  he  picked  up  a  Jewish  youth,  Hayim 
Ben  Attar,  who  returned  to  Spain  as  his  servant,  and 
afterwards  to  England. 

Borrow,  at  the  end  of  September,  was  back  again 
in    Seville,   in   his   house   near   the    cathedral,    in   the 

^  Darlow,  George  Borrotv's  Letters  to  the  Bible  Society,  p.  414. 


THREK  VISITS  TO  SPAIN  197 

Plazuela  de  la  Pila  Seca,  which,  when  I  visited  Seville 
in  the  spring  of  this  year  (1913),  I  found  had  long 
been  destroyed  to  make  way  for  new  buildings.  Here 
he  received  the  following  letter  from  Mr.  George  Browne 
of  the  Bible  Society  : — 

To  Mr.  Borrow 

Bible  Housk,  Oct.  7,  1839. 
My  dear  Friend, — Mr.  Brandram  and  myself  being  both  on 
the  eve  of  a  long  journey,  I  have  only  time  to  inform  you  that 
yours  of  the  2d  ult.  from  Tangier,  and  21st  from  Cadiz  came  to 
hand  this  morning.  Before  this  time  you  have  doubtless  received 
Mr.  Brandram's  letter,  accompanying  the  resolution  of  the  Comee., 
of  which  I  apprised  you,  but  which  was  delayed  a  few  days,  for 
the  purpose  of  reconsideration.  We  are  not  able  to  suggest  pre- 
cisely the  course  you  should  take  in  regard  to  the  hooks  left  at 
Madrid  and  elsewhere,  and  how  far  it  may  be  absolutely  necessary 
or  not  for  you  to  visit  that  city  again  before  you  return.  The 
books  you  speak  of,  as  at  Seville,  may  be  sent  to  Gibraltar  rather 
than  to  England,  as  well  as  any  books  you  may  deem  it  expedient 
or  find  it  necessary  to  bring  out  of  the  country.  As  soon  as  your 
arrangements  are  completed  we  shall  look  for  the  pleasure  of 
seeing  you  in  this  country.  The  haste  in  which  I  am  compelled 
to  write  allows  me  to  say  no  more  than  that  my  best  wishes 
attend  you,  and  that  I  am,  with  sincere  regard,  yours  truly, 

G.  Browne, 

I  thank  you  for  your  kind  remembrance  of  Mrs.  Browne.  Did 
I  thank  you  for  your  letter  to  her  ?  She  feels,  I  assure  you,  very 
much  obliged.  Your  description  of  Tangier  will  be  another 
interesting  '  morceau '  for  her. 

'  Where  is  Borrow?'  asked  the  Bible  Society  mean- 
while of  the  Consuls  at  Seville  and  Cadiz,  but  Borrow 
had  ceased  to  care.  He  hoped  to  become  a  successful 
author  with  his  Gypsies  ;  he  would  at  any  rate  secure 
independence  by  marriage,  which  must  have  been 
already  mooted.      In  November  he  and  Mrs.  Clarke 


198    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

were  formally  betrothed,  and  would  have  been  married  in 
Spain,  but  a  Protestant  marriage  was  impossible  there. 
When  preparing  to  leave  Seville  he  had  one  of  those 
fiery  quarrels,  with  which  his  life  was  to  be  studded. 
This  time  it  was  with  an  official  of  the  city  over  a  pass- 
port, and  the  official  promptly  locked  him  up  for  thirty 
hours.  Hence  the  following  letter  in  response  to  his 
complaint.  The  writer  is  Mr.,  afterwards  Sir,  George 
Jerningham,  then  Secretary  of  Legation  at  IMadrid, 
who  it  may  be  mentioned  came  from  Costessey,  four 
miles  from  Norwich.  It  is  written  from  the  British 
Legation,  and  is  dated  23rd  December  1839  : 

I  have  the  honour  to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  your  two 
letters,  the  one  without  date,  the  second  dated  the  19th  November 
(which  however  ought  to  have  been  December)^  respecting  the 
outrageous  conduct  pursued  towards  you  at  Seville  by  the  Alcalde 
of  the  district  in  which  you  resided.  I  lost  no  time  in  addressing 
a  strong  representation  thereon  to  the  Spanish  Minister,  and  I 
have  to  inform  you  that  he  has  acquainted  me  with  his  having 
written  to  Seville  for  exact  information  upon  the  whole  subject, 
and  that  he  has  promised  a  further  answer  to  my  representation 
as  soon  as  his  inquiries  shall  have  been  answered.  In  the  mean- 
time I  shall  not  fail  to  follow  up  your  case  with  proper  activity. 

Borrow  was  still  in  Seville,  hard  at  work  upon  the 
Gypsies,  all  through  the  first  three  months  of  the  year 
1840.  In  April  the  three  friends  left  Cadiz  for  London. 
A  letter  of  this  period  from  Mr.  Brackenbury,  the 
British  Consul  at  Cadiz,  is  made  clear  by  these  facts  : 

To  George  Borrow,  Esq. 

British  Consulate,  Cadiz,  January  27th,  1840. 

My  dear  Sir, — I  received  on  the  19th  your  very  acceptable 

letter  without  date,  and  am  heartily  rejoiced  to  find  that  you  have 

received  satisfaction  for  the  insult,  and  that  the  Alcalde  is  likely 

to  be  punished  for  his  unjustifiable  conduct.      If  you  come  to 


THREE  VISITS  TO  SPAIN  199 

Cadiz  your  baggage  may  be  landed  and  deposited  at  the  gates  to 
be  shipped  with  yourselves  wherever  the  steamer  may  go,  in  which 
case  the  authorities  would  not  examine  it,  if  you  bring  it  into 
Cadiz  it  would  be  examined  at  the  gates — or,  if  you  were  to  get 
it  examined  at  the  Custom  House  at  Seville  and  there  sealed  with 
the  seal  of  the  Customs — it  might  then  be  transhipped  into  the 
steamer  or  into  any  other  vessel  without  being  subjected  to  any 
examination.  If  you  take  your  horse,  the  agents  of  the  steamer 
ought  to  be  apprized  of  your  intention,  that  they  may  be  prepared, 
which  I  do  not  think  they  generally  are,  with  a  suitable  box. 

Consuls  are  not  authorised  to  unite  Protestant  subjects  in  the 
bonds  of  Holy  Matrimony  in  popish  countries — which  seems  a 
peculiar  hardship,  because  popish  priests  could  not,  if  they 
would — hence  in  Spain  no  Protestants  can  be  legally  married. 
Marriages  solemnised  abroad  according  to  the  law  of  that  land 
wheresoever  the  parties  may  at  the  time  be  inhabitants  are  valid 
— but  the  law  of  Spain  excludes  their  priests  from  performing 
these  ceremonies  where  both  parties  are  Protestants — and  where 
one  is  a  Papist,  except  a  dispensation  be  obtained  from  the  Pope. 
So  you  must  either  go  to  Gibraltar — or  wait  till  you  arrive  in 
England.  I  have  represented  the  hardship  of  such  a  case  more 
than  once  or  twice  to  Government.  In  my  report  upon  the 
Consular  Act,  6  Geo.  iv.  cap.  87 — eleven  years  ago — I  suggested 
that  provision  should  be  made  to  legalise  marriages  solemnised 
by  the  Consul  within  the  Consulate,  and  that  such  marriages 
should  be  registered  in  the  Consular  Office — and  that  duly  certified 
copies  thereof  should  be  equivalent  to  certificates  of  marriages 
registered  in  any  church  in  England,  These  suggestions  not  having 
been  acted  upon,  I  brought  the  matter  under  the  consideration  of 
Lord  John  Russell  (I  being  then  in  England  at  the  time  of  his 
altering  the  Marriage  Act),  and  proposed  that  Consuls  abroad 
should  have  the  power  of  magistrates  and  civil  authorities  at 
home  for  receiving  the  declarations  of  British  subjects  who  might 
wish  to  enter  into  the  marriage  state — but  they  feared  lest  the 
introduction  of  such  a  clause,  simple  and  efficacious  as  it  would 
have  been,  might  have  endangered  the  fate  of  the  Bill ;  and  so  we 
are  as  Protestants  deprived  of  all  power  of  being  legally  married 
in  Spain. 

What  sort  of  a  horse  is  your  hack  .? — What  colour  ?   What  age  ? 


200    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Would  he  carry  me  ? — What  his  action  ?  What  his  price  ?  Because 
if  in  all  these  points  he  would  suit  me,  perhaps  you  would  give 
me  the  refusal  of  him.  You  will  of  course  enquire  whether  your 
Arab  may  be  legally  exported. 

All  my  family  beg  to  be  kindly  remembered  to  you. — I  am,  my 
dear  sir,  most  faithfully  yours,  J.  M.  Bkackenbury. 

There  is  a  young  gentleman  here,  who  is  in  Spain  partly  on 
account  of  his  health — partly  for  literary  purposes.  I  will  give 
him,  with  your  leave,  a  line  of  introduction  to  you  whenever  he 
may  go  to  Seville.  He  is  the  Honourable  R.  Dundas  Murray, 
brother  of  Lord  Elibank,  a  Scottish  nobleman. 


CHAPTER    XIX 

BORROWS  SPANISH  CIRCLE 

There  are  many  interesting  personalities  that  pass  before 
us  in  Borrow's  three  separate  narratives/  as  they  may  be 
considered,  of  his  Spanish  experiences.  We  would  fain 
know  more  concerning  the  two  excellent  secretaries 
of  the  Bible  Society — Samuel  Brandram  and  Joseph 
Jowett.  We  merely  know  that  the  former  was  rector 
of  Beckenham  and  was  one  of  the  Society's  secretaries 
until  his  death  in  1850;'  that  the  latter  was  rector  of 
Silk  Willoughby  in  Lincolnshire,  and  belonged  to  the 
same  family  as  Jowett  of  Balliol.  But  there  are  many 
quaint  characters  in  Sorrow's  own  narrative  to  whom  we 
are  introduced.  There  is  Maria  Diaz,  for  example,  his 
landlady  in  the  house  in  the  Calle  de  Santiago  in  Madrid, 
and  her  husband,  Juan  Lopez,  also  assisted  Borrow  in 
his  Bible  distribution.  Very  eloquent  are  Borrow's 
tributes  to  the  pair  in  the  pages  of  TJie  Bible  in  Spain. 
*  Honour  to  Maria  Diaz,  the  quiet,  dauntless,  clever, 
Castilian  female  1  I  were  an  ungrate  not  to  speak  well 
of  her.'  We  get  a  glimpse  of  Maria  and  her  husband 
long  years  afterwards  when  a  pensioner  in  a  Spanish 

*  The  accounts  in  The  Bible  in  Spain,  The  Gypsies  of  Spain,  and  the  Letters 
to  the  Bible  Society. 

'^  The  only  '  Samuel  Brandram  '  in  the  Dictionary  of  National  Biography 
is  a  reciter  who  died  in  1892 ;  he  certainly  had  less  claim  to  the  distinction 
than  his  namesake, 

201 


202    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

almshouse  revealed  himself  as  the  son  of  Borrow's 
friends.  Eduardo  Lopez  was  only  eight  years  of  age 
when  Borrow  was  in  Madrid,  and  he  really  adds 
nothing  to  our  knowledge.^  Then  there  were  those 
two  incorrigible  vagabonds  —  Antonio  Buchini,  his 
Greek  servant  with  an  Italian  name,  and  Benedict 
Mol,  the  Swiss  of  Lucerne,  who  turns  up  in  all 
sorts  of  improbable  circumstances  as  the  seeker 
of  treasure  in  the  Church  of  St.  James  of  Com- 
postella  —  only  a  masterly  imagination  could  have 
made  him  so  interesting.  Concerning  these  there  is 
nothing  to  supplement  Borrow's  own  story.  But  we 
have  attractive  glimpses  of  Borrow  in  the  frequently 
quoted  narrative  of  Colonel  Napier,^  and  this  is  so 
illuminating  that  I  venture  to  reproduce  it  at  greater 
length  than  previous  biographers  have  done.  Edward 
Elers  Napier,  who  was  born  in  1808,  was  the  son  of  one 
Edward  Elers  of  the  Royal  Navy.  His  widow  married 
the  famous  Admiral  Sir  Charles  Napier,  who  adopted 
her  four  children  by  her  first  husband.  Edward  Elers, 
the  younger,  or  Edward  Napier,  as  he  came  to  be  called, 
was  educated  at  Sandhurst  and  entered  the  army, 
serving  for  some  years  in  India.  Later  his  regiment 
was  ordered  to  Gibraltar,  and  it  was  thence  that  he 
made  several  sporting  excursions  into  Spain  and 
Morocco.  Later  he  served  in  Egypt,  and  when,  through 
ill-health,  he  retired  in  1843  on  half-pay,  he  lived  for 
some  years  in  Portugal.  In  1854  he  returned  to  the 
army  and  did  good  work  in  the  Crimea,  becoming 
a  lieutenant-general  in  1864.     He  died  in  1870.    He 


*  See  'Footprints  of  George  Borrow'  by  A.  G.  Jayne  in  Tke  Bible  in  the 
World  for  July  1908. 

^  Excursions  along  the  Shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  by  Lieut.-Colonel 
E.  Napier,  vol.  ii.  (Henry  Colburn),  1842. 


BORROWS  SPANISH  CIRCLE  203 

wrote,  in  addition  to  these  Koccursions,  several  other 
books,  including  Scenes  and  Sports  in  Foreign  Lands} 
It  was  during  his  military  career  at  Gibraltar  that  he 
met  George  Borrow  at  Seville,  as  the  following  ex- 
tracts from  his  book  testify.  Borrow's  pretension  to 
have  visited  the  East  is  characteristic — and  amusing  : — 

1839.  Saturday  4>th. — Out  early,  sketching  at  the  Alcazar. 
After  breakfast  it  set  in  a  day  of  rain,  and  I  was  reduced  to  wander 
about  the  galleries  overlooking  the  '  patio.'  Nothing  so  dreary 
and  out  of  character  as  a  rainy  day  in  Spain.  Whilst  occupied  in 
moralising  over  the  dripping  water-spouts,  I  observed  a  tall, 
gentlemanly-looking  man,  dressed  in  a  zamarra,'  leaning  over  the 
balustrades,  and  apparently  engaged  in  a  similar  manner  with 
myself.  Community  of  thoughts  and  occupation  generally  tends 
to  bring  people  together.  From  the  stranger's  complexion,  which 
was  fair,  but  with  brilliant  black  eyes,  I  concluded  he  was  not 
a  Spaniard  ;  in  short,  there  was  something  so  remarkable  in  his 
appearance  that  it  was  difficult  to  say  to  what  nation  he  might 
belong.  He  was  tall,  with  a  commanding  appearance  ;  yet,  though 
apparently  in  the  flower  of  manhood,  his  hair  was  so  deeply  tinged 
with  the  winter  of  either  age  or  sorrow  as  to  be  nearly  snow-white. 
Under  these  circumstances,  I  was  rather  puzzled  as  to  what 
language  I  should  address  him  in.  At  last,  putting  a  bold  face 
on  the  matter,  I  approached  him  with  a  'Bonjour,  monsieur, 
quel  triste  temps  ! ' 

'  Yes,  sir,'  replied  he  in  the  purest  Parisian  accent ;  '  and  it  is 
very  unusual  weather  here  at  this  time  of  the  year.' 

'  Does  "  monsieur"  intend  to  be  any  time  at  Seville  .'' '  asked  I. 
He  replied  in  the  affirmative.  We  were  soon  on  a  friendly  foot- 
ing, and  from  his  varied  information  I  was  both  amused  and 
instructed.  Still  I  became  more  than  ever  in  the  dark  as  to  his 
nationality ;  I  found  he  could  speak  English  as  fluently  as  French. 
I  tried  him  on  the  Italian  track ;  again  he  was  perfectly  at  home. 


^  See  Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  vol.  xl.  pp.  54-5.5. 
2  A  sheepskin  jacket  with  the  wool  outside,  a  costume  much  worn  here  in 
cold  weather. 


204    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

He  had  a  Greek  servant,  to  whom  he  gave  his  orders  in  Romaic. 
He  conversed  in  good  Castilian  with  '  mine  host ' ;  exchanged 
a  German  salutation  with  an  Austrian  Baron,  at  the  time  an 
inmate  of  the  fonda ;  and  on  mentioning  to  him  my  morning  visit 
to  Triano,  which  led  to  some  remarks  on  the  gypsies,  and  the 
probable  place  from  whence  they  derived  their  origin,  he  expressed 
his  belief  that  it  was  from  Moultan,  and  said  that,  even  to  this 
day,  they  retained  many  Moultanee  and  Hindoostanee  expressions, 
such  as  '  panee '  (water),  '  buree  panee '  ^  (the  sea),  etc.  He  was 
rather  startled  when  I  replied  '  in  Hindee,'  but  was  delighted  on 
finding  I  was  an  Indian,  and  entered  freely,  and  with  depth  and 
acuteness,  on  the  affairs  of  the  East,  most  of  which  part  of  the 
world  he  had  visited. 

In  such  varied  discourse  did  the  hours  pass  so  swiftly  away 
that  we  were  not  a  little  surprised  when  Pepe,  the  '  mozo '  (and  I 
verily  believe  all  Spanish  waiters  are  called  Pepe),  announced  the 
hour  of  dinner  ;  after  which  we  took  a  long  walk  together  on  the 
banks  of  the  river.  But,  on  our  return,  I  was  as  much  as  ever  in 
ignorance  as  to  who  might  be  my  new  and  pleasant  acquaintance. 

I  took  the  first  opportunity  of  questioning  Antonio  Baillie 

(Buchini)  on  the  subject,  and  his  answer  only  tended  to  increase 

my    curiosity.       He    said    that    nobody    knew    what    nation    the 

mysterious  Unknown  "  belonged  to,  nor  what  were  his  motives 

for  travelling.     In  his  passport  he  went  by  the  name  of ,  and 

as  a  British  subject,  but  in  consequence  of  a  suspicion  being  enter- 
tained that  he  was  a  Russian  spy,  the  police  kept  a  sharp  look-out 
over  him.  Spy  or  no  spy,  I  found  him  a  very  agreeable  com- 
panion ;  and  it  was  agreed  that  on  the  following  day  we  should 
visit  together  the  ruins  of  Italica. 

May  5. — After  breakfast,  the  '  Unknown ""  and  myself, 
mounting  our  horses,  proceeded  on  our  expedition  to  the  ruins  of 
Italica.  Crossing  the  river,  and  proceeding  through  the  populous 
suburb  of  Triano,  already  mentioned,  we  went  over  the  same 
extensive  plain  that  I  had  traversed  in  going  to  San  Lucar,  but 
keeping  a  little  more  to  the  right  a  short  ride  brought  us  in  sight 
of  the  Convent  of  San  Isidrio,  surrounded  by  tall  cypress  and 
waving  date-trees.     This  once  richly-endowed  religious  establish- 


1  f 


panee '  is  masculine  (marginal  note  in  pencil). 


BORROWS  SPANISH  CIRCLE  205 

ment  is,  together  with  the  small  neif^libouring  village  of  Santi 
Ponci,  I  believe,  the  property  of  the  Duke  of  Medina  Coeli,  at 
whose  expense  the  excavations  are  now  carried  on  at  the  latter 
place,  which  is  the  ancient  site  of  the  Roman  Italica. 

We  sat  down  on  a  fragment  of  the  walls,  and  sadly  recalling 
the  splendour  of  those  times  of  yore,  contrasted  with  the  desola- 
tion around  us,  the  '  Unknown  ''  began  to  feel  the  vein  of  poetry 
creeping  through  his  in\vard  soul,  and  gave  vent  to  it  by  reciting, 
with  great  emphasis  and  effect,  and  to  the  astonishment  of  the 
wondering  peasant,  who  must  have  thought  him  '  loco,**  the  follow- 
ing well-known  and  beautiful  lines  : — 

'  Cypress  and  ivy^  weed  and  wallflower,  grown, 
Matted  and  massed  together^  hillocks  heap'd 
On  what  were  chambers,  arch  crush'd,  column  strewn 

In  fragments,  choked  up  vaults,  and  frescoes  steep'd 
In  subterranean  damps,  where  the  owl  peep'd, 

Deeming  it  midnight ;  Temples,  baths,  or  halls — 
Pronounce  who  can :  for  all  that  Learning  reap'd 
From  her  research  hath  been,  that  these  are  walls.' 

I  had  been  too  much  taken  up  with  the  scene,  the  verses,  and 
the  strange  being  who  was  repeating  them  with  so  much  feeling, 
to  notice  the  approach  of  one  who  now  formed  the  fourth  person 
of  our  party.  This  was  a  slight  female  figure,  beautiful  in  the 
extreme,  but  whom  tattered  garments,  raven  hair  (which  fell  in 
matted  elf-locks  over  her  naked  shoulders),  swarthy  complexion,  and 
flashing  eyes,  proclaimed  to  be  of  the  wandering  tribe  of  '  gitanos/ 
From  an  intuitive  sense  of  natural  politeness  she  stood  with  crossed 
arms,  and  a  slight  smile  on  her  dark  and  handsome  countenance, 
until  my  companion  had  ceased,  and  then  addressed  us  in  the 
usual  whining  tone  of  supplication,  with  '  Caballeritos,  una 
limosita  !  Dios  se  lo  pagara  a  ustedes  ! '  ('  Gentlemen,  a  little 
charity  !  God  will  repay  it  to  you ! ')  The  gypsy  girl  was  so 
pretty,  and  her  voice  so  sweet,  that  I  involuntarily  put  my  hand 
in  my  pocket. 

'  Stop  ! '  said  the  '  Unknown.'  '  Do  you  remember  what  I  told 
you  about  the  Eastern  origin  of  these  people?  You  shall  see 
I  am  correct.  Come  here,  my  pretty  child,"'  said  he  in  Moultanee, 
'  and  tell  me  where  are  the  rest  of  your  tribe  ? ' 


206    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

The  girl  looked  astounded,  replied  in  the  same  tongue,  but  in 
broken  language ;  when,  taking  him  by  the  arm,  she  said,  in 
Spanish  :  '  Come,  caballero ;  come  to  one  who  will  be  able  to 
answer  you  ; '  and  she  led  the  way  down  amongst  the  ruins  towards 
one  of  the  dens  formerly  occupied  by  the  wild  beasts,  and  disclosed 
to  us  a  set  of  beings  scarcely  less  savage.  The  sombre  walls  of 
this  gloomy  abode  were  illumined  by  a  fire,  the  smoke  from  which 
escaped  through  a  deep  fissure  in  the  massy  roof;  whilst  the 
flickering  flames  threw  a  blood-red  glare  on  the  bronzed  features 
of  a  group  of  children,  of  two  men,  and  a  decrepit  old  hag,  who 
appeared  busily  engaged  in  some  culinary  preparations. 

On  our  entrance,  the  scowling  glance  of  the  males  of  the  party, 
and  a  quick  motion  of  the  hand  towards  the  folds  of  the  '  faja,'^ 
caused  in  vie,Sit  least,any thing  but  a  comfortable  sensation;  but  their 
hostile  intentions,  if  ever  entertained,  were  immediately  removed  by 
a  wave  of  the  hand  from  our  conductress,  who,  leading  my  com- 
panion towards  the  sibyl,  whispered  something  in  her  ear.  The 
old  crone  appeared  incredulous.  The  '  Unknown '  uttered  one 
word ;  but  that  word  had  the  effect  of  magic ;  she  prostrated  her- 
self at  his  feet,  and  in  an  instant,  from  an  object  of  suspicion  he 
became  one  of  worship  to  the  whole  family,  to  whom,  on  taking 
leave,  he  made  a  handsome  present,  and  departed  with  their  united 
blessings,  to  the  astonishment  of  myself,  and  what  looked  very  like 
terror  in  our  Spanish  guide. 

I  was,  as  the  phrase  goes,  dying  with  curiosity,  and,  as  soon  as 
we  mounted  our  horses,  exclaimed,  '  Where,  in  the  name  of  good- 
ness, did  you  pick  up  your  acquaintance  and  the  language  of  these 
extraordinary  people  ? '  '  Some  years  ago,  in  Moultan,'  he  replied. 
'  And  by  what  means  do  you  possess  such  apparent  influence  over 
them  ? '  But  the  '  Unknown  "*  had  already  said  more  than  he 
perhaps  wished  on  the  subject.  He  drily  replied  that  he  had 
more  than  once  owed  his  life  to  gipsies,  and  had  reason  to  know 
them  well ;  but  this  was  said  in  a  tone  which  precluded  all  further 
queries  on  my  part.  The  subject  was  never  again  broached,  and 
we  returned  in  silence  to  the  fonda.  .  .  . 

Mat/  1th. — Pouring  with  rain    all  day,  during    which    I    was 

^  In  the  folds  of  the  sash  is  concealed  the  '^uavaja,'  or  formidable  clasp- 
knife,  always  worn  by  the  Spaniard. 


BORROWS  SPANISH  CIRCLE  207 

mostly  in  the  society  of  the  '  Unknown.'  This  is  a  most  extra- 
ordinary character,  and  the  more  I  see  of  him  the  more  I  am 
puzzled.  He  appears  acquainted  with  everybody  and  everything, 
but  apparently  unknown  to  every  one  himself.  Though  his  figure 
bespeaks  youth — and  by  his  own  account  his  age  does  not  exceed 
thirty — yet  the  snows  of  eighty  winters  could  not  have  whitened 
his  locks  more  completely  than  they  are.  But  in  his  dark  and 
searching  eye  there  is  an  almost  supernatural  penetration  and 
lustre,  which,  were  I  inclined  to  superstition,  might  induce  me  to 
set  down  its  possessor  as  a  second  Melmoth ;  and  in  that 
character  he  often  appears  to  me  during  the  troubled  rest  I 
sometimes  obtain  through  the  medium  of  the  great  soother, 
'  laudanum.' 

The  next  most  interesting  figure  in  the  Borrow 
gallery  of  this  period  is  Don  Luis  de  Usdz  y  Rio,  who 
was  a  good  friend  to  Borrow  during  the  whole  of  his 
sojourn  in  Spain.  It  was  he  who  translated  Borrow's 
appeal  to  the  Spanish  Prime  Minister  to  be  permitted 
to  distribute  Scio's  New  Testament.  He  watched  over 
Borrow  with  brotherly  solicitude,  and  wrote  him  more 
than  one  excellent  letter,  of  which  the  two  following 
from  my  Borrow  Papers,  the  last  written  at  the  close 
of  the  Spanish  period,  are  the  most  interesting : 


To  Mr.  George  Borrow 

{Translated from  the  Spanish) 

Piazza  di  Spagna  47,  Rome,  7  April  1838. 

Dear  Friend, — I  received  your  letter,  and  thank  you  for  the 
same.  I  know  the  works  under  the  name  of  '  Boz,'  about  which 
you  write,  and  also  the  Memoirs  of  the  PickwicJi  Club,  and  although 
they  seemed  to  me  good,  I  have  failed  to  appreciate  properly  their 
qualities,  because  much  of  the  dramatic  style  and  dialogue  in  the 
same  are  very  difficult  for  those  who  know  English  merely  from 
books,     I  made  here  a  better  acquaintance  than  that  of  Mezzo- 


208    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

fanti  (who  knows  nothing),  namely,  that  of  Prof.  Michel- Angelo 
Lanci,  already  well-known  on  account  of  his  work,  La  sacra  scrit- 
tura  illustrata  con  monuvienti  fenico-assiri  ed  egiziani,  etc.,  etc. 
(The  Scriptures,  illustrated  with  Phoenician-Assyrian  and  Egyp- 
tian monuments),  which  I  am  reading  at  present,  and  find  very 
profound  and  interesting,  and  more  particularly  very  original. 
He  has  written  and  presented  me  a  book,  Esposizione  del  versetti 
del  Giobbe  intorno  al  cavallo  (Explanation  of  verses  of  Job  about 
a  horse),  and  in  these  and  other  works  he  proves  himself  to  be  a 
great  philologist  and  Oriental  scholar.  I  meet  him  almost  daily, 
and  I  assure  you  that  he  seems  to  me  to  know  everything  he 
treats  thoroughly,  and  not  like  Gayangos  or  Calderon,  etc.,  etc. 
His  philosophic  works  have  created  a  great  stir  liere,  and  they  do 
not  please  much  the  friars  here ;  but  as  here  they  are  not  like  the 
police  barbarians  there,  they  do  not  forbid  it,  as  they  cannot. 
Lanci  is  well  known  in  Russia  and  in  Germany,  and  when  I  bring 
his  works  there,  and  you  are  there  and  have  not  read  them,  you 
will  read  them  and  judge  for  yourself. 

Wishing  you  well,  and  always  at  your  service,  I  remain,  always 
yours,  Luis  de  Usoz  y  Rio. 


To  Mr.  George  Borrow 
{Translated from  the  Spanish) 

Naples,  28  August  1839. 

Deau  Friend, — I  received  your  letter  of  the  28  July  written 
from  Sevilla,  and  I  am  waiting  for  that  which  you  promise  me 
from  Tangier. 

I  am  glad  that  you  liked  Sevilla,  and  I  am  still  more  glad  of 
the  successful  shipment  of  the  beloved  book.  In  distributing  it, 
you  are  rendering  the  greatest  service  that  generous  foreigners  (I 
mean  Englishmen)  can  render  to  the  real  freedom  and  enlighten- 
ment in  Spain,  and  any  Spaniard  who  is  at  heart  a  gentleman 
must  be  grateful  for  this  service  to  the  Society  and  to  its  agent. 
In  my  opinion,  if  Spain  had  maintained  the  customs,  character, 
and  opinions  that  it  had  three  centuries  ago,  it  ought  to  have 
maintained  also  unity  in  religious  opinions :  but  that  at  present 


BORROWS  SPANISH  CIRCLE  209 

the  circumstances  have  changed,  and  the  moral  character  and 
the  advancement  of  my  unfortunate  country  would  not  lose  any- 
thing in  its  purification  and  progress  by  (the  grant  of)  religious 
liberty. 

You  are  saying  that  I  acted  very  light-mindedly  in  judging 
Mezzofanti  without  speaking  to  him.  You  know  that  the  other 
time  when  I  was  in  Italy  I  had  dealings  and  spoke  with 
him,  and  that  I  said  to  you  that  he  had  a  great  facility 
for  speaking  languages,  but  that  otherwise  he  was  no  good. 
Because  I  have  seen  him  several  times  in  the  Papal  chapels  with  a 
certain  air  of  an  ass  and  certain  grimaces  of  a  blockhead  that 
cannot  happen  to  a  man  of  talent.  I  am  told,  moreover,  that  he 
is  a  spy,  and  that  for  that  reason  he  was  given  the  hat.  I  know, 
moreover,  that  he  has  not  written  anything  at  all.  For  that 
reason  I  do  not  wish  to  take  the  trouble  of  seeing  him. 

As  regards  Lanci,  I  am  not  saying  anything  except  that  I  am 
waiting  until  you  have  read  his  work  without  passion,  and  that  if 
my  books  have  arrived  at  Madrid,  you  can  ask  my  brother  in 
Santiago. 

You  are  judging  of  him  and  of  Pahlin  in  the  way  you  reproach 
me  with  judging  Mezzofanti;  I  thank  you,  and  I  wish  for  the 
dedication  Gabricote ;  and  I  also  wish  for  your  return  to  Madrid, 
so  that  in  going  to  Toledo  you  would  get  a  copy  of  Aristophanes 
with  the  order  that  will  be  given  to  you  by  my  brother,  who  has 
got  it. 

If  for  the  Gabricote  or  other  work  you  require  my  clumsy  pen, 
write  to  Florence  and  send  me  a  rough  copy  of  what  is  to  be  done, 
in  English  or  in  Spanish,  and  I  will  supply  the  finished  work. 
From  Florence  I  intend  to  go  to  London,  and  I  should  be  obliged 
if  you  would  give  me  letters  and  instructions  that  would  be  of  use 
to  me  in  literary  matters,  but  you  must  know  that  my  want  of 
knowledge  of  speaking  English  makes  it  necessary  that  the 
Englishmen  who  speak  to  me  should  know  Spanish,  French,  or 
Italian. 

As  regards  robberies,  of  which  you  accuse  Southern  people, 
from  the  literatures  of  the  North,  do  you  think  that  the  robberies 
committed  by  the  Northerners  from  the  Southern  literature  would 
be  left  behind  ?     Erunt  vitia  donee  homines. — Always  yours, 

Eleutheros. 
o 


210    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Yet  another  acquaintance  of  these  Spanish  days 
was  Baron  Taylor — Isidore  Justin  Severin  Taylor, 
to  give  him  his  full  name — who  had  a  career  of 
wandering  achievement,  with  Government  pay,  that 
must  have  appealed  to  Borrow.  Although  his  father 
was  an  Englishman  he  became  a  naturalised  French- 
man, and  he  was  for  a  time  in  the  service  of  the 
French  Government  as  Director  of  the  Theatre 
Fran9ais,  when  he  had  no  little  share  in  the  pro- 
duction of  the  dramas  of  Victor  Hugo  and  Dumas. 
Later  he  was  instrumental  in  bringing  the  Luxor 
obelisk  from  Egypt  to  Paris.  He  wrote  books  upon 
his  travels  in  Spain,  Portugal  and  Morocco.^  He 
wandered  all  over  Europe  in  search  of  art  treasures 
for  the  French  Government,  and  may  very  well  have 
met  Borrow  again  and  again.  Borrow  tells  us  that 
he  had  met  Taylor  in  France,  in  Russia,  and  in 
Ireland,  before  he  met  him  in  Andalusia,  collecting 
pictures  for  the  French  Government.  Borrow's  de- 
scription of  their  meetings  is  inimitable  : — 

Whenever  he  descries  me,  whether  in  the  street  or  the  desert, 
the  brilliant  hall  or  amongst  Bedouin  haimas,  at  Novogorod  or 
Stambul,  he  flings  up  his  arms  and  exclaims,  "O  del/  I  have 
again  the  felicity  of  seeing  my  cherished  and  most  respectable 
Borrow."  ^ 

The  last  and  most  distinguished  of  Borrow's  col- 
leagues while  in  Spain  was  George  Villiers,  fourth  Earl 
of  Clarendon,  whom  we  judge  to  have  been  in  private 
life  one  of  the  most  lovable  men  of  his  epoch.  George 
Villiers   was   born   in  London    in    1800,  and  was  the 

*  His  principal  work  was  Voyages  pittoresques  et  romantiques  dansl'ancienne 
France. 

*  The  Bible  in  Spain,  ch.  xv. 


BORROWS  SPANISH  CIRCLE  211 

grandson  of  the  first  Earl,  Thomas  Villiers,  who  received 


IN     SPAIN. 


«t 


k 


Jvu. 


u^ 


Ul 


4- 


^ 


Hrvufw- 


rh'   - 


^^ 


-^ 


^^U.i,T7_ 


A  LETTER  FROM  SIR  GEORGE  VILLIERS,  AFTERWARDS  EARL  OF 
CLARENDON,  BRITISH  MINISTER  TO  SPAIN,  TO  GEORGE  BORROW 

his  title  when  holding  office  in  Lord  North's  admini- 
stration, but  is  best  known  from  his  association  in 
diplomacy  with  Frederick   the  Great.     His   grandson 


212    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

was  born,  as  it  were,  into  diplomacy,  and  at  twenty 
years  of  age  was  an  attache  to  the  British  Embassy  in 
St.  Petersburg.  Later  he  was  associated  with  Sir 
John  Bowring  in  negotiating  a  commercial  treaty  with 
France.  In  August  1833  he  was  sent  as  British 
Minister — 'envoy  extraordinary'  he  was  called — to 
Madrid,  and  he  had  been  two  years  in  that  seething- 
pot  of  Spanish  affairs,  with  Christinos  and  Carlists  at 
one  another's  throats,  when  Borrow  arrived  in  the 
Peninsula.  His  influence  was  the  greater  with  a  suc- 
cession of  Spanish  Prime  Ministers  in  that  in  1838  he 
had  been  largely  instrumental  in  negotiating  the  quad- 
ruple alliance  between  England,  France,  Spain,  and 
Portugal.  In  March  1839 — exactly  a  year  before 
Borrow  took  his  departure — he  resigned  his  position  at 
Madrid,  having  then  for  some  months  exchanged  the 
title  of  Sir  George  ViUiers  for  that  of  Earl  of  Claren- 
don through  the  death  of  his  uncle  ;  ^  Borrow  thereafter 
having  to  launch  his  various  complaints  and  grievances 
at  his  successor,  Mr. — afterwards  Sir  George — Jerning- 
ham,  who,  it  has  been  noted,  had  his  home  in  Nor- 
folk, at  Costessey,  four  miles  from  Norwich.  Villiers 
returned  to  England  with  a  great  reputation,  although 
his  Spanish  policy  was  attacked  in  the  House  of  Lords. 
In  that  same  year,  1839,  he  joined  Lord  Melbourne's 
administration  as  Lord  Privy  Seal,  O'Connell  at  the 
time  declaring  that  he  ought  to  be  made  Lord- 
Lieutenant  of  Ireland,  so  sympathetic  was  he  towards 
concession  and  conciliation  in  that  then  feverishly 
excited  country.  This  office  actually  came  to  him  in 
1847,  and  he  was  Lord-Lieutenant  through  that  dark 
period  of  Ireland's  history,  including  the  Famine,  the 

1  Many  interesting  letters  from  Villiers  will  be  found  in  Memoirs  and 
Memories,  by  his  niece,  Mrs.  C.  W.  Earle,  1911. 


BORROWS  SPANISH  CIRCLE  213 

Young  Ireland  rebellion,  and  the  Smith  O'Brien  rising. 
He  pleased  no  one  in  Ireland.  No  English  statesman 
could  ever  have  done  so  under  such  ideals  of  govern- 
ment as  England  would  have  tolerated  then,  and  for 
long  years  afterwards.  The  Whigs  defended  him, 
the  Tories  abused  him,  in  their  respective  organs. 
He  left  Ireland  in  1852  and  was  more  than  once  men- 
tioned as  possible  Prime  Minister  in  the  ensuing  years. 
He  was  Secretary  of  State  for  Foreign  Affairs  in  Lord 
Aberdeen's  Administration  during  the  Crimean  War, 
and  he  held  the  same  office  under  Lord  Palmerston, 
again  under  Earl  Russell  in  1865,  and  under  Mr.  Glad- 
stone in  1868.  He  might  easily  have  become  Prime 
Minister.  Greville  in  his  Diary  writes  of  Prince 
Albert's  desire  that  he  should  succeed  Lord  John 
Russell,  but  Clarendon  said  that  no  power  on  earth 
would  make  him  take  that  position.  He  said  he  could 
not  speak,  and  had  not  had  parliamentary  experience 
enough.  He  died  in  1870,  leaving  a  reputation  as  a 
skilful  diplomatist  and  a  disinterested  politician,  if  not 
that  of  a  great  statesman.  He  had  twice  refused 
the  Governor- Generalship  of  India,  and  three  times  a 
marquisate. 

Sir  George  Villiers  seems  to  have  been  very 
courteous  to  Borrow  during  the  whole  of  the  time  they 
were  together  in  Spain.  It  would  have  been  easy  for 
him  to  have  been  quite  otherwise.  Borrow's  Bible 
mission  synchronised  with  a  very  delicate  diplomatic 
mission  of  his  own,  and  in  a  measure  clashed  with  it. 
The  government  of  Spain  was  at  the  time  fighting 
the  ultra-clericals.  Physical  and  moral  strife  were 
rife  in  the  land.  Neither  Royalists  nor  Carlists  could 
be  expected  to  sympathise  with  Borrow's  schemes, 
which  were  fundamentally  to  attack  their  church.    But 


214    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Villiers  was  at  all   times   friendly,  and,  as  far   as  he 
could  be,  helpful.     Borrow  seems  to  have  had  ready 
access    to    him,    and    he   answered    his    many  letters. 
He  gave  Borrow  an  opportunity  of  an  interview  with 
the   formidable    Prime    Minister   Mendizabal,    and   he 
interviewed  another   minister  and   persuaded   him   to 
permit  Borrow  to  print  and  circulate  his  Bibles.     He 
intervened   successfully   to   release    Borrow   from   his 
Madrid  prison.     But  Villiers  could  not  have  had  any 
sympathy  with  Borrow  other  than  as  a  British  subject 
to  be  protected  on  the  Roman  citizen  principle.     We 
do  not  suppose  that  when  The  Bible  in  Spain  appeared 
he  was  one  of  those  who  were  captivated  by  its  extra- 
ordinary qualities.     When  Borrow  crossed  his  path  in 
later  life   he   received    no  special   consideration,  such 
as  would   be  given  very  promptly  in  our   day   by   a 
Cabinet  minister  to  a  man  of  letters  of  like  distinction. 
We  find  him  on  one  occasion  writing  to  the  ex-minister, 
now  Lord  Clarendon,  asking  his  help  for  a  consulship. 
Clarendon  replied  kindly  enough,  but  sheltered  himself 
behind   the   statement  that  the   Prime   Minister  was 
overwhelmed    with   applications   for    patronage.      Yet 
Clarendon,  who  held  many  high  offices  in  the  following 
years,  might    have  helped  if  he  had   cared  to  do   so. 
Some  years  later — in  1847 — there  was  further  corres- 
pondence when  Borrow  desired  to  become  a  Magistrate 
of  Suffolk.    Here  again  Clarendon  wrote  three  courteous 
letters,   and    appears    to    have    done    his    best   in   an 
unenthusiastic  way.     But  nothing  came  of  it  all. 


CHAPTER    XX 

MARY    BORROW 

Among  the  many  Borrow  manuscripts  in  my  possession 
1  find  a  page  of  unusual  pathos.  It  is  the  inscription 
that  Borrow  wrote  for  his  wife's  tomb,  and  it  is  in  the 
tremulous  handwriting  of  a  man  weighed  down  by  the 
one  incomparable  tragedy  of  life's  pilgrimage  : 

Sacred  to  the  Memory  of  Mary  Borrow, 
the  Beloved  and  Affectionate  Wife  of 
George  Borrow,  Esqtdre,  who  departed 
this  Life  on  the  30th  Jan.  1869- 

George  Borrow. 

The  death  of  his  wife  saddened  Borrow,  and  assisted  to 
transform  him  into  the  unamiable  creature  of  Norfolk 
tradition.  But  it  is  well  to  bear  in  mind,  when  we  are 
considering  Borrow  on  his  domestic  and  personal  side, 
that  he  was  unquestionably  a  good  and  devoted  husband 
throughout  his  married  life  of  twenty-nine  years.  It 
was  in  the  year  1832  that  Borrow  and  his  wife  first 
met.  He  was  twenty-nine  ;  she  was  a  widow  of  thirty- 
six.  She  was  undeniably  very  intelligent,  and  was 
keenly  sympathetic  to  the  young  vagabond  of  wonder- 
ful adventures  on  the  highways  of  England,  now  so 
ambitious  for  future  adventure  in  distant  lands.  Her 
maiden  name  was  Mary  Skepper.  She  was  one  of  the 
two  children  of  Edmund  Skepper  and  his  wife  Anne, 

215 


216    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

who  lived  at  Oulton  Hall  in  Suffolk,  whither  they  had 
removed  from  Beccles  in  1805.  Mary's  brother  in- 
herited the  Oulton  Hall  estate  of  three  hundred  acres, 
and  she  had  a  mortgage  the  interest  of  which  yielded 
£450  per  annum.  In  July  1817  Mary  married,  at  Oul- 
ton Church,  Henry  Clarke,^  a  lieutenant  in  the  Navy, 
who  died  eight  months  later  of  consumption.  Two 
months  after  his  death  their  child  Henrietta  Mary,  the 
'  Hen '  who  was  Sorrow's  life  companion,  was  born. 
There  is  a  letter  among  my  Borrow  Papers  addressed 
to  the  widow  by  her  husband's  father  at  this  time.  It 
is  dated  17th  June  1818,  and  runs  as  follows : 

I  read  your  very  kind,  affectionate,  and  respectful  Letter  of 
the  15th  Inst,  with  Feelings  of  Satisfaction  and  thankfulness — 
thankful  that  God  has  mercifully  given  you  so  pleasing  a  Pledge 
of  the  Love  of  my  late  dear,  but  lamented  son,  and  I  most  sincerely 
hope  and  trust  that  dear  little  Henrietta  will  live  to  be  the  Joy 
and  Consolation  of  your  Life :  and  satisfyed  I  am  that  you  are 
what  I  always  esteemed  you  to  be,  one  of  the  best  of  Women  ;  God 

1  All  I  know  of  Henry  Clarke  is  contained  in  two  little  documents  in  my 
Borrow  Papers  which  run  as  follows  : 

'These  are  to  Certify  the  Principal  OflScers  and  Commissioners  of  H.M. 
Navy  that  Mr.  Henry  Clarke  has  Served  as  Midshipman  on  board  H.M.  Ship 
Salvador  del  Mundo  under  my  Command  from  the  23  September  1810  to 
the  date  hereof,  during  which  time  he  behaved  with  Diligence,  Sobriety,  and 
Attention,  and  was  always  obedient  to  Command. 

Given  under  my  Hand  on  board  the 
Salvador  del  Mundo  the  4  April 
1811. 

James  Nash,  Captain.' 
'These  are  to  Certify  the  Principal  Officers  and  Commissioners  of  H.M. 
Navy  that  Mr.  Henry  Clarke  has  Served  as  Midshipman  on  board  H.M.  Ship 
Tisiphone  under  my  Command  from  the  20th  of  June  1813  to  the  date  hereof, 
during  which  time  he  behaved  with  Diligence,  Sobriety,  and  Attention,  and 
was  always  obedient  to  Command. 

Given  under  my  Hand  on  board  the 
Tisiphone  in  the  Needles  passage 
this  30th  day  of  November  1813. 

£.  H ODDER,  Captain.' 


MARY  BORROW  217 

grant !  that  you  may  be,  as  I  am  sure  you  deserve  to  be  one  of  the 
happiest — His  Ways  of  Providence  are  past  finding  out ;  to  you 
— they  seem  indeed  to  have  been  truly  afflictive :  but  we  cannot 
possibly  say  that  they  are  really  so  ;  we  cannot  doubt  His  Wisdom 
nor  ought  we  to  distrust  His  Goodness,  let  us  avow,  then,  where 
we  have  not  the  Power  of  fathoming — viz.  the  dispensations  of 
God  ;  in  His  good  time  He  will  show  us,  perhaps,  that  every  pain- 
ful Event  which  has  happened  was  abundantly  for  the  best — I  am 
truly  glad  to  hear  that  you  and  the  sweet  Babe,  my  little  grand 
Daughter,  are  doing  so  well,  and  I  hope  I  shall  have  the  pleasure 
shortly  of  seeing  you  either  at  Oulton  or  Sisland.  I  am  sorry  to 
add  that  neither  Poor  L.  nor  myself  are  well. — Louisa  and  my 
Family  join  me  in  kind  love  to  you,  and  in  best  regards  to  your 
Avorthy  Father,  Mother,  and  Brother. 

Mary  Skepper  was  certainly  a  bright,  intelligent  girl, 
as  I  gather  from  a  manuscript  poem  before  me  written  to 
a  friend  on  the  eve  of  leaving  school.  As  a  widow,  living 
at  first  with  her  parents  at  Oulton  Hall,  and  later  with 
her  little  daughter  in  the  neighbouring  cottage,  she 
would  seem  to  have  busied  herself  with  all  kinds  of 
philanthropies,  and  she  was  clearly  in  sympathy  with 
the  religious  enthusiasms  of  certain  neighbouring 
families  of  Evangelical  persuasion,  particularly  the 
Gurneys  and  the  Cunninghams.  The  Rev.  Francis 
Cunningham  was  Rector  of  Pakefield,  near  Lowestoft, 
from  1814  to  1830.  He  married  Richenda,  a  sister  of 
the  distinguished  Joseph  John  Gurney  and  of  Elizabeth 
Fry,  in  1816.  In  1830  he  became  Vicar  of  St. 
Margaret's,  Lowestoft.  His  brother,  John  William 
Cunningham,  was  Vicar  of  Harrow,  and  married  a 
Verney  of  the  famous  Buckinghamshire  family.  This 
John  William  Cunningham  was  a  great  light  of  the 
Evangelical  Churches  of  his  time,  and  was  for  many 
years  editor  of  The  Christian  Observer.  His  daughter 
Mary  Richenda  married  Sir  James  Fitzjames  Stephen, 


218    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

the  well-known  judge,  and  the  brother  of  Sh-  Leslie 
Stephen.  But  to  return  to  Francis  Cunningham,  whose 
acquaintance  with  Borrow  was  brought  about  through 
Mrs.  Clarke.  Cunningham  was  a  great  supporter  of  the 
British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society,  and  was  the  founder 
of  the  Paris  branch.  It  was  speedily  revealed  to  him 
that  Borrow's  linguistic  abilities  could  be  utilised  by 
the  Society,  and  he  secured  the  co-operation  of  his 
brother-in-law,  Joseph  John  Gurney,  in  an  effort  to 
find  Borrow  work  in  connection  with  the  Society. 
There  is  a  letter  of  Borrow's  to  Mrs.  Clarke  of  this 
period  in  my  Borrow  Papers  which  my  readers  will 
already  have  read/ 

We  do  not  meet  Mary  Clarke  again  until  1834, 
when  we  find  a  letter  from  her  to  Borrow  addressed  to 
St.  Petersburg,  in  which  she  notifies  to  him  that  he 
has  been  '  mentioned  at  many  of  the  Bible  Meetings 
this  year,'  adding  that  '  dear  Mr.  Cunningham  '  had 
spoken  so  nicely  of  him  at  an  Oulton  gathering.  '  As 
I  am  not  afraid  of  making  you  proud,'  she  continues, 
*  I  will  tell  you  one  of  his  remarks.  He  mentioned 
you  as  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  and  interesting 
individuals  of  the  present  day.'  Henceforth  clearly 
Mary  Clarke  corresponded  regularly  with  Borrow,  and 
one  or  two  extracts  from  her  letters  are  given  by  Dr. 
Knapp.  Joseph  Jowett  of  the  Bible  Society  forwarded 
Borrow's  letters  from  Russia  to  Cunningham,  who 
handed  them  to  Mrs.  Clarke  and  her  parents. 
Borrow  had  proposed  to  continue  his  mission  by 
leaving  Russia  for  China,  but  this  Mary  Clarke 
opposed  : 

I  must  tell  you  that  your  letter  chilled  me  when  I  read  your 

^  Vide  supra,  p.  158. 


MARY  BORROW  219 

intention  of  going  as  a  Missionary  or  Agent,  with  tlie  Manchu 
Scriptures  in  your  hand,  to  the  Tartars,  that  land  of  incalculable 
dangers.^ 

In  1835  Borrow  was  back  in  England  at  Norwich 
with  his  mother,  and  on  a  visit  to  ^lary  Clarke  and  the 
Skeppers  at  Oulton.  Mrs.  Skepper  died  just  before  his 
arrival  in  England — that  is,  in  September  1835 — while 
her  husband  died  in  February  1836.  Mary  Clarke's 
only  brother  died  in  the  following  year." 

Thus  we  see  Mary  Clarke,  aged  about  forty,  left  to 
fight  the  world  with  her  daughter,  aged  twenty-three, 
and  not  only  to  fight  the  world  but  her  own  family, 
particularly  her  brother's  widow,  owing  to  certain 
ambiguities  in  her  father's  will  which  are  given  forth  in 
dreary  detail  in  Dr.  Knapp's  Life.^     It  was  these  legal 

»  Knapp's  Life,  vol.  i.  189. 

*  The  tombs  in  Oulton  Churchyard  bear  the  following  inscriptions  : 

(1)  Beneath  this  stone  are  interred  in  the  same  grave  the  Mortal  Remains 

of  Edmund  Skepper,  who  died  P'ebry.  6th,  1836,  aged  69.  Also 
Ann  Skepper,  his  wife,  who  died  Sept.  15th,  1835,  aged  62. 

(2)  Beneath  this  stone  are  interred   the  Mortal  Remains  of  Breame 

Skepper,  who  died  May  22nd,  1837,  aged  42,  leaving  a  wife  and 
six  children  to  lament  his  severe  loss. 

(3)  Sacred  to  the  Memory  of  Lieut.  Henry  Clarke  of  His  Maj.'s  Royal 

Navy,  who  departed  this  life  on  the  21st  of  March  1818,  aged  25 
years,  leaving  a  firmly  attached  widow  and  an  infant  daughter  to 
lament  his  irreparable  loss. 

A  further  tomb  commemorates  the  mother  of  George  Borrow,  whose 
epitaph  is  given  elsewhere. 

^  The  following  document  in  Henrietta's  handwriting  is  among  my 
Borrow  Papers : 

'  \Vhen  my  Grandfather  died  he  owed  a  mortgage  of  £5000  on  the  Oulton 
Hall  estate — to  a  Mrs.  Purdy. 

'  At  my  Grandfather's  death  my  Mother  applied  to  her  Brother  for  the 
money  left  to  her  and  also  the  money  left — beside  the  money  owed  to  her 
daughter  which  is  also  mentioned  in  the  Will.  She  was  refused  both,  and 
told  moreover  that  neither  the  money  nor  the  interest  would  be  paid  to  her. 

'My  Mother  and  I  were  living  at  the  Cottage  since  the  funeral  of  my 
Grandfather — the  Skeppers  removed  to  the  Hall.  The  Estate  was  to  be  sold 
— and  my  Mother  and  myself  were  to  be  paid. 


220    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

quarrels  that  led  Mary  Clarke  and  her  daughter  to  set 
sail  for  Spain,  where  Mary  had  had  the  indefatigable  and 
sympathetic  correspondent  during  the  previous  year  of 
trouble.  Borrow  and  Mary  Clarke  met,  as  we  have 
seen,  at  Seville  and  there,  at  a  later  period,  they 
became  *  engaged.'  Mrs.  Clarke  and  her  daughter 
Henrietta  sailed  for  Spain  in  the  Royal  Tar,  leaving 
London  for  Cadiz  in  June  1839.  Much  keen  corre- 
spondence between  Borrow  and  Mrs.  Clarke  had  passed 
before  the  final  decision  to  visit  Spain.  His  mother 
was  one  of  the  few  people  who  knew  of  Mrs.  Clarke's 
journey  to  Seville,  and  must  have  understood,  as 
mothers  do,  what  was  pending,  although  her  son  did 
not.  When  the  engagement  is  announced  to  her — in 
November  1839 — she  writes  to  Mary  Clarke  a  kindly, 
affectionate  letter : 

I  shall  now  resign  him  to  your  care,  and  may  you  love  and 
cherish  him  as  much  as  I  have  done.  I  hope  and  trust  that  each 
will  try  to  make  the  other  happy. 

There  is  no  reason  whatever  to  accept  Dr.  Knapp's 
suggestion,^  strange  as  coming  from  so  pronounced  a 
hero-worshipper,  that  Borrow  married  for  money.  And 
this  because  he  had  said  in  one  of  his  letters,  *  It  is 
better  to  suffer  the  halter  than  the  yoke,'  the  kind  of 

'My  Mother  mentioned  this  to  her  solicitor,  who  hastened  back  to 
Norwich  and  got  £5000 — which  he  carried  to  the  old  lady,  Mrs.  Purdy,  next 
day  and  paid  off  the  mortgage.  My  Mother  then  was  mortgagee  in  posses- 
sion— after  which  she  let  the  place  for  what  she  could  get — this  accounts  for 
the  whole  affair  and  the  whole  confusion. 

'  My  Mother  was  a  Widow  at  this  time  and  remained  so  for  some  time 
after — consequently  all  transactions  took  place  with  her  and  not  with  Mr, 
Borrow — she  being  afterwards  married  to  Mr.  Borrow  without  a  settlement. 

'After  this,  in  1844,  the  place  was  again  put  up  by  public  auction  and 
bought  in  by  Mr.  Borrow  and  my  Mother.' 

*  Knapp's  Life,  vol.  i.  pp.  330,  331. 


MARY  BORROW  221 

thing  that  a  man  might  easily  say  on  the  eve  of  making 
a  proposal  which  he  was  not  sure  would  be  accepted. 
Nor  can  Dr.  Knapp's  further  discovery  of  a  casual 
remark  of  Borrow's — '  marriage  is  by  far  the  best  way 
of  getting  possession  of  an  estate ' — be  counted  as  con- 
clusive. That  Borrow  was  all  his  life  devoted  to  his 
wife  I  think  is  proved  by  his  many  letters  to  her  that 
are  given  in  this  volume,  letters,  however,  which  Dr. 
Knapp  had  not  seen.  Borrow's  further  tribute  to  his 
wife  and  stepdaughter  in  Wild  Wales  is  well  known  : 

Of  my  wife  I  will  merely  say  that  she  is  a  perfect  paragon  of 
wives,  can  make  puddings  and  sweets  and  treacle  posset,  and  is 
the  best  woman  of  business  in  Eastern  Anglia.  Of  my  step- 
daughter— for  such  she  is,  though  I  generally  call  her  daughter, 
and  with  good  reason,  seeing  that  she  has  always  shown  herself  a 
daughter  to  me — that  she  has  all  kinds  of  good  qualities,  and 
several  accomplishments,  knowing  something  of  tonchology,  more 
of  botany,  drawing  capitally  in  the  Dutch  style,  and  playing 
remarkably  well  on  the  guitar — not  the  trumpery  German  thing 
so  called,  but  the  real  Spanish  guitar. 

Borrow  belonged  to  the  type  of  men  who  would 
never  marry  did  not  some  woman  mercifully  take  them 
in  hand.  Mrs.  Clarke,  when  she  set  out  for  Spain, 
had  doubtless  determined  to  marry  Borrow.  It  is 
clear  that  he  had  no  idea  of  marrying  her.  Yet  he 
was  certainly  '  engaged,'  as  we  learn  from  a  letter  to 
Mr.  Brackenbury,  to  be  given  hereafter,  when  he 
wrote  a  letter  from  Seville  to  Mr.  Brandram,  dated 
March  18,  in  which  he  said :  '  I  wish  very  much 
to  spend  the  remaining  years  of  my  life  in  the 
northern  parts  of  China,  as  I  think  I  have  a  call  to 
those  regions.  ...  I  hope  yet  to  die  in  the  cause 
of  my  Redeemer.'  Surely  never  did  man  take  so 
curious   a   view   of    the   responsibilities   of   marriage. 


222    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

He    must   have   known   that   his   proposal   would   be 
declined — as  it  was. 

Very  soon  after  the  engagement  Borrow  experi- 
enced his  third  term  of  imprisonment  in  Spain, 
this  time,  however,  only  for  thirty  hours,  and  all 
because  he  had  asked  the  Alcalde,  or  mayor  of  the 
district  in  which  he  lived,  for  his  passport,  and  had 
quarrelled  with  his  worship  over  the  matter.     Borrow 


Page,/ 


18^.    Marriage  tolemoized  at  the/^.^y^(^t***j^    in  the  Pariili  of  // ^fi^U- f^Crt^  ^^ntjCt^i:.  in  the  Caauty  fA  t^^j^j>^^yf_ 


H>       WImMm^ 


// 


^ 


fdt^&u^ii. 


BMda>aik.dw4llAi.^  rii*.^Ni»«JB< 


/^^f»rt^/Of> 


be{w«n 


'fjAyy'  , 


Caftmlfram  U«  lUgi^ir  ^  At  O^,*  a/ftwad,  lUf    /^ 


!»//  ^  MX.     ;ii^»riL/-f,^fK  ^  ^ 


i5*4rf^. 


MRS.  BORROWS  COPY  OF  HERMARRIAGE  CERTIFICATE. 


gave  up  the  months  of  this  winter  of  1839  rather  to 
writing  his  first  important  book.  The  Gypsies  of  Spain ^ 
than  to  the  concerns  of  the  Bible  Society.  Finally 
Borrow,  with  Mrs.  Clarke  and  her  daughter,  sailed 
from  Cadiz  on  the  3rd  April  1840,  as  we  have  already 
related.  He  had  with  him  his  Jewish  servant,  Hayim 
Ben  Attar,  and  his  Arabian  horse,  Sidi  Habismilk, 
both  of  which  were  to  astonish  the  natives  of  the 
Suffolk  broads.  The  party  reached  London  on  16th 
April  and  stayed  at  the  Spread  Eagle  Inn,  Gracechurch 
Street.  The  marriage  took  place  at  St.  Peter's  Church, 
Cornhill,  on  23rd  April  1840. 

There  are  only  two  letters  from  JNIrs.  Borrow  to  her 
husband  extant.  Dr.  Knapp  apparently  discovered 
none  in  the  Borrow  Papers  in  his  possession.  The  two 
before  me  were  written  in  the  Hereford  Square  days 


MARY  BORROW  223 

between  the  years  1860  and  1869 — the  last  year  of 
Mrs.  Borrow's  life.  The  pair  had  been  married  some 
twenty-five  years  at  least,  and  it  is  made  clear  by  these 
letters  alone  that  at  the  end  of  this  period  they  were 
still  a  most  happily  assorted  couple.  Mrs.  Borrow 
must  have  gone  to  Brighton  for  her  health  on  two 
separate  occasions,  each  time  accompanied  by  her 
daughter.  Borrow,  who  had  enjoyed  many  a  pleasant 
ramble  on  his  own  account,  as  we  shall  see — rambles 
which  extended  as  far  away  as  Constantinople — is 
'  keeping  house '  in  Hereford  Square,  Brompton,  the 
while.  It  will  be  noted  that  Mrs.  Borrow  signed  her- 
self '  Carreta,'  the  pet  name  that  her  husband  always 
gave  her.  Dr.  Knapp  points  out  that  *  carreta '  means 
a  Spanish  dray-cart,  and  that  '  carita,'  *  my  dear,'  was 
probably  meant.  But,  careless  as  was  the  famous 
word-master  over  the  spelling  of  words  in  the  tongues 
that  he  never  really  mastered  scientifically,  he  could 
scarcely  have  made  so  obvious  a  blunder  as  this,  and 
there  must  have  been  some  particular  experience  in 
the  lives  of  husband  and  wife  that  led  to  the  playful 
designation.^     Here  are  the  two  letters  : 


To  George  Borrow,  Esq. 

Grenville  Place,  Brighton,  Sussex. 

My  darling  Husband, — I  am  thankful  to  say  that  I  arrived 
here  quite  safe  on  Saturday,  and  on  Wednesday  I  hope  to  see  you 
at  home.  We  may  not  be  home  before  the  evening  about  six 
o'clock,  sooner  or  later,  so  do  not  be  anxious,  as  we  shall  be  care- 


^  The  following  suggestion  has,  however,  been  made  to  me  by  a  friend  of 
Henrietta  MacOubrey  nee  Clarke  : 

'  I  think  Borrow  intended  "Carreta"  for  "dearest."  It  is  impossible  to 
think  that  he  would  call  his  wife  a  "cart."     Perhaps  he  intended  "  Carreta  " 


224    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

ful.  We  took  tea  with  the  Edwards  at  six  o'clock  the  day  I 
came  ;  they  are  a  very  kind,  nice  family.  You  must  take  a  walk 
when  we  come  home,  but  remember  now  we  have  a  young  servant, 
and  do  not  leave  the  house  for  very  long  together.  The  air  here 
is  very  fresh,  and  much  cooler  than  in  London,  and  I  hope  after 
the  five  days'  change  I  shall  be  benefited,  but  I  wish  to  come 
home  on  Wednesday.  See  to  all  the  doors  and  windows  of  a 
night,  and  let  Jane  keep  up  the  chain,  and  lock  the  back  door  by 
the  hop  plant  before  it  gets  dark.  Our  love  to  Lady  Soame. 
— And  with  our  best  love  to  you,  believe  me,  your  own 

Carreta. 

Sunday  morning,  10  o'clock. 
If  I  do  not  hear  from  you  I  shall  conclude  all  is  well,  and  you 
may  do  the  same  with  regard  to  us.     Have  the  tea  ready  a  little 
before  six  on  Wednesday.     Henrietta  is  wonderfully  improved  by 
the  change,  and  sends  dear  and  best  love  to  you. 


To  George  Borrow,  Esq. 

33  Grenville  Place,  Brighton,  Sussex. 
Thursday  morning. 

My  dear  Husband, — As  it  is  raining  again  this  morning  I 
write  a  few  lines  to  you.  I  cannot  think  that  we  have  quite  so 
much  rain  as  you  have  at  Brompton,  for  I  was  out  twice  yesterday, 
an  hour  in  the  morning  in  a  Bath  chair,  and  a  little  walk  in  the 
evening  on  the  Marine  Parade,  and  I  have  been  out  little  or  much 
every  day,  and  hope  I  feel  a  little  better.  Our  dear  Henrietta 
likewise  says  that  she  feels  the  better  for  the  air  and  change.  As 
we  are  here  I  think  we  had  better  remain  till  Tuesday  next,  when 
the  fortnight  will  be  up,  but  I  fear  you  feel  very  lonely.  I  hope 
you  get  out  when  you  can,  and  that  you  take  care  of  your  health, 
I  hope  Ellen  continues  to  attend  to  yr.  comfort,  and  that  when 
she  gives  orders  to  Mrs.  Harvey  or  the  Butcher  that  she  shews 

for  "  Querida."  Probably  their  pronunciation  was  not  Castillian,  and  they 
spelled  the  word  as  they  pronounced  it.  In  speaking  of  her  to  "Hen."  Borrow 
always  called  her  "  Mamma."  Mrs.  MacOubrey  took  a  great  fancy  to  me 
because  she  said  I  was  like  "  Mamma."    She  meant  in  character,  not  in  person.' 


MARY  BORROW  225 

you  what  they  send.  I  shall  want  the  stair  carpets  down,  and  the 
drawing-room  nice — blinds  and  shutters  closed  to  prevent  the  sun, 
also  bed-rooms  prepared,  with  well  ai7-ed  sheets  and  counterpane 
b?/  next  Tuesday.  I  suppose  we  sliall  get  to  Hereford  Square 
perhaps  about  five  o'clock,  but  I  shall  write  again.  You  had 
better  dine  at  yr.  usual  time,  and  as  we  shall  get  a  dinner  here 
we  shall  want  only  tea. 

Henrietta's  kindest  dear  love  and  mine,  remaining  yr.  true 
and  affectionate  wife.  Caureta. 

There  is  one  letter  from  Borrow  to  his  wife,  written 
from  London  in  1843,  in  which  he  says : 

I  have  not  been  particularly  well  since  I  wrote  last ;  indeed, 
the  weather  has  been  so  horrible  that  it  is  enough  to  depress 
anybody's  spirits,  and,  of  course,  mine.  I  did  very  wrong  not  to 
bring  you  when  I  came,  for  without  you  I  cannot  get  on  at  all. 
Left  to  myself  a  gloom  comes  upon  me  which  I  cannot  describe.^ 

Assuredly  no  reader  can  peruse  the  following  pages 
without  recognising  the  true  affection  for  his  wife  that 
is  transparent  in  his  letters  to  her.  Arthur  Dalrymple's 
remark  that  he  had  frequently  seen  Borrow  and  his 
wife  travelling: 

He  stalking  along  with  a  huge  cloak  wrapped  round  him  in  all 
weathers,  and  she  trudging  behind  him  like  an  Indian  squaw, 
with  a  carpet  bag,  or  bundle,  or  small  portmanteau  in  her  arms, 
and  endeavouring  under  difficulty  to  keep  up  with  his  enormous 
strides, 

is  clearly  a  travesty.  '  Mrs.  Borrow  was  devoted  to  her 
husband,  and  looked  after  business  matters ;  and  he 
always  treated  her  with  exceeding  kindness,'  is  the 
verdict  of  Miss  Elizabeth  Jay,  who  was  frequently 
privileged  to  visit  the  husband  and  wife  at  Oulton. 

^  Dr.  Knapp  :  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  39. 


CHAPTER    XXI 

'THE  CHILDREN  OF  THE  OPEN  AIR' 

Behold  George  Borrow,  then,  in  a  comfortable  home 
on  the  banks  of  Oulton  Broad — a  family  man.  His 
mother — sensible  woman — declines  her  son's  invitation 
to  live  with  the  newly-married  pair.  She  remains  in 
the  cottage  at  Norwich  where  her  husband  died.  The 
Borrows  were  married  in  April  1840,  by  May  they  had 
settled  at  Oulton.  It  was  a  pleasantly  secluded  estate, 
and  Borrows  wife  had  £450  a  year.  He  had,  a  month 
before  his  marriage,  written  to  Mr.  Brandram  to  say 
that  he  had  a  work  nearly  ready  for  publication,  and 
'  two  others  in  a  state  of  forwardness.'  The  title  of  the 
first  of  these  books  he  enclosed  in  his  letter.  It  was 
The  Zincali:  Or  an  Account  of  the  Gyjmes  of  Spain. 
Mr.  Samuel  Smiles,  in  his  history  of  the  House  of 
Murray — A  Publisher  and  his  Frie7ids — thus  relates 
the  circumstances  of  its  publication  : — 

In  November  1840  a  tall,  athletic  gentleman  in  black  called 
upon  Mr.  Murray  offering  a  MS.  for  perusal  and  publication.  .  .  . 
Mr.  Murray  could  not  fail  to  be  taken  at  first  sight  with  this 
extraordinary  man.  He  had  a  splendid  physique,  standing  six 
feet  two  in  his  stockings,  and  he  had  brains  as  well  as  muscles,  as 
his  works  sufficiently  show.  The  book  now  submitted  was  of 
a  very  uncommon  character,  and  neither  the  author  nor  the 
publisher    were    very   sanguine  about  its    success.      Mr.  Murray 

226 


*THE  CHILDREN  OF  THE  OPEN  AIR'   227 

agreed,  after   perusal,  to    print  and  publish  750  copies  of  The 
Gypsies  of  Spain,  and  divide  the  profits  with  the  author. 

It  was  at  the  suggestion  of  Richard  Ford,  then  the 
greatest  living  English  authority  on  Spain,  that  Mr. 
Murray  published  the  book.  It  did  not  really  com- 
mence to  sell  until  IVie  Bible  in  Spain  came  a  year  or 
so  later  to  bring  the  author  reputation.^  From  Novem- 
ber 1840  to  June  1841  only  three  hundred  copies  had 
been  sold  in  spite  of  friendly  reviews  in  some  half 
dozen  journals,  including  The  Athenceum  and  llie 
Literary  Gazette.  The  first  edition,  it  may  be  men- 
tioned, contained  on  its  title-page  a  description  of  the 
author  as  '  late  agent  of  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible 
Society  in  Spain.'  ^  There  is  very  marked  compression  in 
the  edition  now  in  circulation,  and  a  perusal  of  the  first 
edition  reveals  many  interesting  features  that  deserve 
to  be  restored  for  the  benefit  of  the  curious.  But 
nothing  can  make  The  Zincali  a  great  piece  of  litera- 
ture. It  was  summarised  by  the  Edinburgh  Review  at 
the  time  as  'a  hotch-potch  of  the  jockey,  tramper,  philo- 
logist, and  missionary.'  That  description,  which  was 
not  intended  to  be  as  flattering  as  it  sounds  to-day, 
appears  more  to  apply  to  The  Bible  in  Spain.  But 
The  Zijicali  is  too  confused,  too  ill-arranged   a  book 

'  There  were  750  copies  of  the  first  edition  of  The  Zincali  in  two  vols,  iu  1841. 
750  of  the  second  edition  in  1843j  and  a  third  issue  of  750  in  the  same  year. 
A  fourth  edition  of  7,500  copies  appeared  in  the  cheap  Home  and  Colonial 
Library  in  1846,  and  there  was  a  fifth  edition  of  1000  copies  in  1870.  These 
were  all  the  editions  published  in  England  during  Borrow's  lifetime.  Dr. 
Knapp  traced  three  American  editions  during  the  same  period. 

2  The  Zincali;  or  an  Account  of  the  Gypsies  of  Spain.  With  an  original  col- 
lection of  their  songs  and  poetry,  and  a  copious  dictionary  of  their  language. 
By  George  Borrow,  Late  Agent  of  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  in 
Spain.  '  For  that  which  is  unclean  by  nature,  thou  canst  entertain  no  hope ;  no 
washing  will  turn  the  gypsy  white.' — Ferdousi.  In  two  volumes.  London: 
John  Murray,  Albemarle  Street,  1841. 


228    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

to  rank  with  Borrow's  four  great  works.  There  are 
passages  in  it,  indeed,  so  eloquent,  so  romantic,  that 
no  lover  of  Borrow's  writings  can  afford  to  neglect 
them.  But  this  was  not  the  book  that  gypsy-loving 
Borrow,  with  the  temperament  of  a  Romany,  should 
have  written,  or  could  have  written  had  he  not  been 
obsessed  by  the  '  science '  of  his  subject.  His  real 
work  in  gypsydom  was  to  appear  later  in  Lavengi'o  and 
The  Romany  Rye.  For  Borrow  was  not  a  man  of 
science — a  philologist,  a  folk-lorist  of  the  first  order. 

No  one,  indeed,  who  had  read  only  The  ZincaU  among 
Borrow's  works  could  see  in  it  any  suspicion  of  the 
writer  who  was  for  all  time  to  throw  a  glamour  over  the 
gypsy,  to  make  the  '  children  of  the  open  air '  a  verit- 
able cult,  to  earn  for  him  the  title  of  '  the  walking  lord 
of  gypsy  lore,'  and  to  lay  the  foundations  of  an  admir- 
able succession  of  books  both  in  fact  and  fiction — but 
not  one  as  great  as  his  own.  The  city  of  Seville,  it  is 
clear,  with  sarcastic  letters  from  Bible  Societv  secretaries 
on  one  side,  and  some  manner  of  love  romance  on  the 
other,  was  not  so  good  a  place  for  an  author  to  pro- 
duce a  real  book  as  Oulton  was  to  become.  Richard 
Ford  hit  the  nail  on  the  head  when  he  said  with  quite 
wonderful  prescience : 

How  I  wish  you  had  given  us  more  about  yourself,  instead 
of  the  extracts  from  those  blunder-headed  old  Spaniards,  who 
knew  nothing  about  gypsies !  I  shall  give  you  the  rap,  on  that, 
and  a  hint  to  publish  your  whole  adventures  for  the  last  twenty 
years.^ 

Henceforth  Borrow  was  to  write  about  himself  and 
to  become  a  great  author  in  consequence.  For  in 
writing  about  liimself  as  in  Lavengro  and  The  Romany 

'  Knapp's  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  378. 


'THE  CHILDREN  OF  THE  OPEN  AIR'    229 

Rye  he  was  to  write  exactly  as  he  felt  about  the 
gypsies,  and  to  throw  over  them  the  glamour  of  his 
own  point  of  view,  the  view  of  a  man  who  loved  the 
broad  highway  and  those  who  sojourned  upon  it.  In 
The  Gypsies  of  Spain  we  have  a  conventional  estimate 
of  the  gypsies.  '  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  they  are 
human  beings  and  have  immortal  souls,'  he  says,  even 
as  if  he  were  writing  a  letter  to  the  Bible  Society.  All 
his  anecdotes  about  the  gypsies  are  unfavourable  to 
them,  suggestive  only  of  them  as  knaves  and  cheats. 
From  these  pictures  it  is  a  far  cry  to  the  creation  of 
Jasper  Petulengro  and  Isopel  Berners.  The  most 
noteworthy  figure  in  The  Zincali  is  the  gypsy  soldier  of 
Valdepeiias,  an  unholy  rascal.  '  To  lie,  to  steal,  to 
shed  human  blood ' — these  are  the  most  marked 
characteristics  with  which  Borrow  endows  the  gypsies 
of  Spain.  '  Abject  and  vile  as  they  have  ever  been, 
the  gitcinos  have  nevertheless  found  admirers  in  Spain,' 
says  the  author  who  came  to  be  popularly  recognised 
as  the  most  enthusiastic  admirer  of  the  gypsies  in  Spain 
and  elsewhere.  Read  to-day  by  the  lover  of  Borrow's 
other  books  21ie  Zincali  will  be  pronounced  a  readable 
collection  of  anecdotes,  interspersed  with  much  dull 
matter,  with  here  and  there  a  piece  of  admirable 
writing.  But  the  book  would  scarcely  have  lived 
had  it  not  been  followed  by  four  works  of  so  fine 
an  individuality.  Well  might  Ford  ask  Borrow  for 
more  about  himself  and  less  of  the  extracts  from 
'  blunder-headed  old  Spaniards.'  When  Borrow  came 
to  write  about  himself  he  revealed  his  real  kindness 
for  the  gypsy  folk.  He  gave  us  Jasper  Petulengro 
and  the  incomparable  description  of  'the  wmd  on 
the  heath.'  He  kindled  the  imagination  of  men, 
proclaimed    the  joys   of    vagabondage    in    a    manner 


230    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

that  thrilled  many  hearts.  He  had  some  predecessors 
and  many  successors,  but  '  none  could  then,  or  can 
ever  again,'  says  the  biographer  of  a  later  Rye,  '  see  or 
hear  of  Romanies  without  thinking  of  Borrow.'^  In 
her  biography  of  one  of  these  successors  in  gypsy  lore, 
Charles  Godfrey  Leland,  Mrs.  Pennell  discusses  the 
probability  that  Borrow  and  Leland  met  in  the  British 


?^       -I^BTniBaion  to  nse  thi)  Reodin^.Ronm  wil]  be  ^.-iLbdrawji  frotn  eny  perton  who  shall  write  op  maJra  mwlra  OD  My  part 
"^  of  a  printed  book  or  rnanuEfbcipfc  belonfjiug  to  the  Musenm. 

U r—  


\\^V.vi 


Headinft  and  Tillo  ol  the  Work  oUrJ."!. 


>0.vmtD. 


.,„(NatDber  of  to  Beftdsi'a  Seat). 


'olatM  of  tlfe  Catalogoe  to  its  place,  as  aooa  aadoDO  wiLb, 


AN  APPLICATION  FOR  A  BOOK  IN  THE  BRITISH  MUSEUM, 
WITH  BORROWS  SIGNATURE 

Museum.  That  is  admitted  in  a  letter  from  Leland  to 
Borrow  in  my  possession.  To  this  letter  Borrow  made 
no  reply.  It  was  wrong  of  him.  But  he  was  then — in 
1873 — a  prematurely  old  man,  worn  out  and  saddened 
by  neglect  and  a  sense  of  literary  failure.  For  this  and 
for  the  other  vagaries  of  those  latter  years  Borrow  will 
not  be  judged  harshly  by  those  who  read  his  story  here. 
Nothing  could  be  more  courteous  than  Borrow's  one 
letter  to  Leland,  written  in  the  failing  handwriting — 
once  so  excellent — of  the  last  sad  decade  of  his 
life: 

22  Hereford  Square^  Brompton,  Nov.  2,  1871. 
Sir, — I    have   received  your  letter  and   am  gratified  by  the 


1  iMrs.   Pennell.     See  Charles  Godfrey  Leland:  a  Biography,  by  Elizabeth 
Robins  Pennell.     2  vols.     1906. 


'THE  CHILDREN  OF  THE  OPEN  AIR'    231 

desire   you  express    to    make   my   acquaintance.     Whenever  you 
please  to  come  I  shall  be  happy  to  see  you. — Yours  truly, 

George  Boiiuow.^ 

The  meeting  did  not,  through  Leland's  absence  from 
London,  then  take  place.  Two  years  later  it  was  another 
story.  The  failing  powers  were  more  noteworthy. 
Borrow  was  by  this  time  dead  to  the  world,  as  the  docu- 
ments before  me  abundantly  testify.  It  is  not,  there- 
fore, necessary  to  assume,  as  Leland's  friends  have  all 
done,  that  Borrow  never  replied  because  he  was  on  the 
eve  of  publishing  a  book  of  his  own  about  the  gypsies. 
There  seems  no  reason  to  assume,  as  Dr.  Knapp  does 
and  as  Leland  does,  that  this  was  the  reason  for  the 
unanswered  letter : 

To  George  Borrow,  Esq. 

Langham  Hotel,  Portland  Place,  March  Zlst,  1873. 
Deae  Sir, — I  sincerely  trust  that  the  limited  extent  of  our 
acquaintanceship  will  not  cause  this  note  to  seem  to  you  too 
presuming.  Breviter,  I  have  thrown  the  results  of  my  observa- 
tions among  English  gypsies  into  a  very  unpretending  little 
volume  consisting  almost  entirely  of  facts  gathered  from  the 
Romany,  without  any  theory.  As  F  owe  all  my  interest  in  the 
subject  to  your  writings,  and  as  I  am  sincerely  grateful  to  you  for 
the  impulse  which  they  gave  me,  I  should  like  very  much  to 
dedicate  my  book  to  you.  Of  course  if  your  kindness  permits 
I  shall  submit  the  proofs  to  you,  that  you  may  judge  whether  the 
work  deserves  the  honour.  I  should  have  sent  you  the  MS.,  but 
not  long  after  our  meeting  at  the  British  Museum  I  left  for  Egypt, 
whence  I  have  very  recently  returned,  to  find  my  publisher  clamor- 
ous for  the  promised  copy. 

It  is  not — God  knows — a  mean  and  selfish  desire  to  help  my 
book  by  giving  it  the  authority  of  your  name,  which  induces  this 

^  Given  in  Mrs.  Pennell's  Leland:  a  Biography,  vol.  ii.  pp.  142-3.     The 
letter  to  which  it  is  a  reply  is  given  in  Knapp's  Borrow,  vol.  ii.  pp.  228-9. 


232    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

request.  But  I  am  earnestly  desirous  for  my  conscience"'  sake  to 
publish  nothing  in  the  Romany  which  shall  not  be  true  and 
sensible,  even  as  all  that  you  have  written  is  true  and  sensible. 
Therefore,  sliotdd  you  take  the  pains  to  glance  over  my  proof,  I 
should  be  grateful  if  you  would  signify  to  me  any  differences  of 
opinion  should  there  be  ground  for  any.  Dr.  A.  F.  Pott  in  his 
Zigeuner  (vol.  ii.  p.  224),  intimates  very  decidedly  that  you  took 
the  word  sliasti-  (Exhastra  de  Moyses)  from  Sanskrit  and  put  it 
into  Romany ;  declaring  that  it  would  be  very  important  if 
shaster  were  Romany.  I  mention  in  my  book  that  English 
gypsies  call  the  New  Testament  (also  any  MS.)  a  shaster ^s^nd.  that 
a  betting-book  on  a  racecourse  is  called  a  shaster  '  because  it  is 
written.'  I  do  not  pretend  in  my  book  to  such  deep  Romany  as 
you  have  achieved — all  that  I  claim  is  to  have  collected  certain 
words,  facts,  phrases,  etc.,  out  of  the  Romany  of  the  roads — 
corrupt  as  it  is — as  I  have  found  it  to-day.  I  deal  only  with  the 
gypsy  of  the  Decadence.  With  renewed  apology  for  intrusion 
should  it  seem  such,  I  remain,  yours  very  respectfully, 

Charles  G.  Leland. 

Francis  Hindes  Groome  remarked  when  reviewing 
Borrow's  Word  Book  \n  1874,^  that  when  The  Gypsies 
of  Spain  wa.s  published  in  1841  'there  were  not  two 
educated  men  in  England  who  possessed  the  slightest 
knowledge  of  Romany. '  In  the  intervening  thirty-three 
years  all  this  was  changed.  There  was  an  army  of 
gypsy  scholars  or  scholar  gypsies  of  whom  Leland  was 
one,  Hindes  Groome  another,  and  Professor  E.  H. 
Palmer  a  third,  to  say  nothing  of  many  scholars  and 
students  of  Romany  in  other  lands.  Not  one  of  them 
seemed  when  Borrow  published  his  JVoid  Book  of  the 
Romany  to  see  that  he  was  the  only  man  of  genius  among 
them.  They  only  saw  that  he  was  an  inferior  philologist 
to  them  all.  And  so  Borrow,  who  prided  himself  on 
things  that  he  could  do  indifferently  quite  as  much  as 

1  The  Academy,  June  13,  187-4. 


'THE  CHILDREN  OF  THE  OPEN  AIR'   233 

upon  things  that  he  could  do  well,  suffered  once  again,  as 
he  was  so  often  doomed  to  suffer,  from  the  lack  of  appre- 
ciation which  was  all  in  all  to  him,  and  his  career  went 
out  in  a  veritable  blizzard.  He  pubHshed  nothing  after 
his  Romano  Lavo-Lil  appeared  in  1874.^  He  was  then 
indeed  a  broken  and  a  bitter  man,  with  no  further 
interest  in  life.  Dedications  of  books  to  him  interested 
him  not  at  all.  In  any  other  mood,  or  a  few  years  earher, 
Leland's  book.  The  English  Gypsies,'^  would  have  glad- 
dened his  heart.  In  his  preface  Leland  expresses  '  the 
highest  respect  for  the  labours  of  Mr.  George  Borrow  in 
this  field,'  he  quotes  Borrow  continually  and  with  sym- 
pathy, and  renders  him  honour  as  a  philologist,  that  has 
usually  been  withheld.  '  To  Mr.  Borrow  is  due  the 
discovery  that  the  word  Jockey  is  of  gypsy  origin  and 
derived  from  chuckiri,  which  means  a  whip,'  and  he 
credits  Borrow  with  the  discovery  of  the  origin  of 
'  tanner  '  for  sixpence  ;  he  vindicates  him  as  against  Dr. 
A.  F.  Pott, — a  prince  among  students  of  gypsydom — of 
being  the  first  to  discover  that  the  English  gypsies  call 
the  Bible  the  Shaster.  But  there  is  a  wealth  of  scientific 
detail  in  Leland's  books  that  is  not  to  be  found  in 
Borrow 's,  as  also  there  is  in  Francis  Hindes  Groome's 
works.  What  had  Borrow  to  do  with  science  ?  He 
could  not  even  give  the  word  '  Rumani '  its  accent,  and 
called  it  'Romany.'  He  'quietly  appropriated,'  says 
Groome,'  Bright's  Spanish  gypsy  words  for  his  own  work, 

^  Romano  Lavo-Lil :  Word  Book  of  the  Romany;  or,  English  Gypsy  Language. 
By  George  Borrow.     London  :  John  Murray,  Albemarle  Street,  1874. 

2  Charles  Godfrey  Leland  (1824-1903)  better  known  as  '  Hans  Breit- 
mann  '  of  the  popular  ballads,  was  born  in  Philadelphia  and  died  in  Florence. 
He  was  always  known  among  his  friends  as  '^The  Rye/  in  consequence  of  his 
enthusiasm  for  the  gypsies  concerning  whom  he  wrote  four  books,  the  best 
known  being  :  The  English  Gypsies  and  their  Language,  by  Charles  G.  Leland  : 
Triibner.     The  Gypsies,  by  Charles  G,  Leland  :   Triibner. 


234    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

mistakes  and  all,  without  one  word  of  recognition.     I 
think  one  has  the  ancient  impostor  there.' ^  '  His  know- 
ledge of  the  strange  history  of  the  gypsies  was  very 
elementary,  of  their  manners  almost  more  so,  and  of 
their  folk-lore  practically  nil,'  says  Groome  elsewhere.^ 
Yet  Mr.    Hindes   Groome  readily  acknowledges  that 
Borrow  is  above  all  writers  on  the  gypsies.     '  He  com- 
municates a  subtle  insight  into  gypsydom  ' — that  is  the 
very  essence  of  the  matter.^     Controversy  will  continue 
in    the   future   as   in   the  present   as   to   whether  the 
gypsies  are  all  that  Borrow  thought  them.     Perhaps 
'  corruption  has  crept  in  among  them '  as  it  did  with 
the   prize-fighters.     They  have  intermarried  with  the 
gorgios,  thrown  over  their  ancient  customs,  lost  all  their 
picturesque  qualities,   it   may   be.      But   Borrow   has 
preserved  in  literature  for  all  time,  as  not  one  of  the 
philologists  and  folk-lore  students  has  done,  a  remarkable 
type  of  people.     But  this  is  not  to  be  found  in  his  first 
original  work.  The  Zincali,  nor  in  his  last.  The  Romano 
Lavo-Lil.    This  glamour  is  to  be  found  in  Lavengro  and 
The  Romany  Rye,  to  which  books  we  shall  come  in  due 
course.    Here  we  need  only  refer  to  the  fact  that  Borrow 
had  loved  the  gypsies  all  his  life — from  his  boyish  meet- 
ing with  Petulengro  until  in  advancing  years  the  proto- 
type of  that  wonderful  creation  of  his  imagination — for 

^  See  Groome's  In  Gipsy  Tents  (W.  P.  Nimmo,  1880),  and  Gipsy  Folk- 
Tales  (Hurst  &  Blackett,  1899).  Francis  Hindes  Groome  (1851-1902),  whom 
it  was  my  privilege  to  know,  was  the  son  of  Archdeacon  Groome,  the  friend 
of  Edward  FitzGerald.  He  was  the  greatest  English  authority  of  his  time  on 
gypsy  language  and  folk-lore.  He  celebrated  his  father's  friendship  with  the 
paraphraser  of  Omar  Khayyam  in  Two  Suffolk  Friends,  1895,  and  wrote  a  good 
novel  of  gypsydom  in  Kriegspiel,  1896.  He  also  edited  an  edition  of  Lavengro 
(Methuen),  1901. 

2  Groome  to  Leland  in  Charles  Godfrey  Leland :  a  Biography,  by  E.  R. 
Pennell,  vol.  ii.  p.  141. 

^  Introduction  to  Lavengro  (Methuen),  1901. 


'THE  CHILDREN  OF  THE  OPEN  AIR'    235 

this  the  Petulengro  of  Lavcngi'o  undoubtedly  was — 
came  to  visit  him  at  Oulton.  Well  might  Leland 
call  him  '  the  Nestor  of  Gypsydom.' 

We  find  the  following  letter  to  Dr.  Bowring  accom- 
panying a  copy  of  IVie  Zincali : 

To  Dr.  John  Bowring. 

58  Jermyn  Street,  St.  James^  April  14,  1841. 
My  dear  Sir, — I  have  sent  you  a  copy  of  my  work  by  the 
mail.  If  you  could  contrive  to  notice  it  some  way  or  other  I 
should  feel  much  obliged.  Murray  has  already  sent  copies  to  all 
the  journals.  It  is  needless  to  tell  you  that  despatch  in  these 
matters  is  very  important,  the  first  blow  is  everything.  Lord 
Clarendon  is  out  of  town.  So  I  must  send  him  his  presentation 
copy  through  Murray,  and  then  write  to  him.  I  am  very  unwell, 
and  must  go  home.  My  address  is  George  Borrow,  Oulton  Hall, 
Oulton,  Lowestoft,  Suffolk.     Your  obedient  servant, 

George  Borrow. 

Two  years  later  we  find  Borrow  writing  to  an 
unknown  correspondent  upon  a  phase  of  folk-lore : 

Oulton,  Lowestoft,  Suffolk,  August  11,  1843. 

My  dear  Sir, — Many  thanks  for  your  interesting  and  kind 
letter  in  which  you  do  me  the  honour  to  ask  my  opinion  respecting 
the  pedigree  of  your  island  goblin,  le  feu  follet  Belenger;  that 
opinion  I  cheerfully  give  with  a  premise  that  it  is  only  an  opinion; 
in  hunting  for  the  etymons  of  these  fairy  names  we  can  scarcely 
expect  to  arrive  at  anything  like  certainty. 

I  suppose  you  are  aware  that  the  name  of  Bilenger  or 
Billinger  is  of  occasional  though  by  no  means  of  frequent  occur- 
rence both  in  England  and  France.  I  have  seen  it ;  you  have 
heard  of  Billings-gate  and  of  Billingham,  the  unfortunate  assassin 
of  poor  Percival, — all  modifications  of  the  same  root ;  Belingart, 
Bilings  home  or  Billing  ston.  But  what  is  Billin-ger  ?  Clearly 
that  which  is  connected  in  some  way  or  other  with  Billing.     You 


236    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

will  find  ^^r,  or  something  like  it,  in  most  European  tongues — 
Boulan^^r,  horolo^gr,  taU'^r,  walker,  ha,Jcei;  hrewer,  beggar.  In 
Welsh  it  is  of  frequent  occurrence  in  the  shape  of  ur  or  gwr — 
henwr  (an  elder),  herre^r  (a  prowZ^r) ;  in  Russian  the  ger,  gwr,  ur, 
er,  appears  in  the  shape  of  iJc  or  k — sapojgni^",  a  shoemaArr, 
Chinobui^,  a  man  possessed  of  rank.  The  root  of  all  these,  as 
well  as  of  or  in  senator,  victor,  etc.,  is  the  Sanscrit  Jeer  or  kir, 
which  means  lord,  master,  maker,  doer,  possessor  of  something  or 
connected  with  something. 

We  want  now  to  come  at  the  meaning  of  Baling  or  Billing, 
which  probably  means  some  action,  or  some  moral  or  personal 
attribute ;  Bolvile  in  Anglo-Saxon  means  honest,  Danish  BoUig ; 
Wallen,  in  German,  to  wanken  or  move  restlessly  about ;  Baylan, 
in  Spanish,  to  dance  (Ball  ?  Ballet  ?),  connected  with  which  are  to 
whirl,  to  fling,  and  possibly  Belinger  therefore  may  mean  a  Billiger 
or  honest  fellow,  or  it  may  mean  a  Walter^^r,  a  whirl^7?^er,  a 
flinger,  or  something  connected  with  restless  motion. 

Allow  me  to  draw  your  attention  to  the  word  '  Will '  in  the 
English  word  will-o-the-wisp ;  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  this 
Will  is  the  abbreviation  of  William  ;  it  is  pure  Danish,  '  Vild' — 
pronounced  will, — and  signifies  wild  ;  Vilden  Visk,  the  wild  or 
moving  wisp.  I  can  adduce  another  instance  of  the  corruption 
of  the  Danish  vild  into  will :  the  rustics  of  this  part  of  England 
are  in  the  habit  of  saying  '  they  are  led  will '  (vild  or  wild)  when 
from  intoxication  or  some  other  cause  they  are  bewildered  at 
night  and  cannot  find  their  way  home.  This  expression  is  clearly 
from  the  old  Norse  or  Danish.  I  am  not  at  all  certain  that  '  BiP 
in  Bilinger  may  not  be  this  same  will  or  vild,  and  that  the  word 
may  not  be  a  corruption  of  vilden,  old  or  elder,  wild  or  flying 
fire.  It  has  likewise  occurred  to  me  that  Bilinger  may  be  derived 
from  '  Volundr,"'  the  worship  of  the  blacksmith  or  Northern  Vulcan. 
Your  obedient  servant,  Georgk  Borrow, 


CHAPTER    XXII 

THE  BIBLE  IN  SPAIN 

In  an  admirable  appreciation  of  our  author,  the  one 
in  which  he  gives  the  oft-quoted  eulogy  concerning 
him  as  'the  delightful,  the  bewitching,  the  never- 
sufficiently-to-be-praised  George  Borrow,'  Mr.  Birrell 
records  the  solace  that  may  be  found  by  small  boys 
in  the  ambiguities  of  a  title-page,  or  at  least  might 
have  been  found  in  it  in  his  youth  and  in  mine. 
In  those  days  in  certain  Puritan  circles  a  very  strong 
line  was  drawn  between  what  was  known  as  Sunday 
reading,  and  reading  that  might  be  permitted  on  week- 
days. The  Sunday  book  must  have  a  religious 
flavour.  There  were  magazines  with  that  particular 
flavour,  every  story  in  them  having  a  pious  moral 
withal.  Very  closely  watched  and  scrutinised  was  the 
reading  of  young  people  in  those  days  and  in  those 
circles.  Mr.  Birrell,  doubtless,  speaks  from  autobio- 
graphical memories  when  he  tells  us  of  a  small  boy 
with  whose  friends  The  Bible  in  Spaifi  passed  muster 
on  the  strength  of  its  title-page.  For  Mr.  Birrell  is 
the  son  of  a  venerated  Nonconformist  minister ;  and 
perhaps  he,  or  at  least  those  who  were  of  his  household, 
had  this  religious  idiosyncrasy.  It  may  be  that  the 
distinction  which  pervaded  the  evangelical  circles  of 
Mr.  Birrell's  youth  as  to  what  were  Sunday  books,  as 

237 


238    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

distinct  from  books  to  be  read  on  week-days,  has  dis- 
appeared. In  any  case  think  of  the  advantage  of  the 
boy  of  that  generation  who  was  able  to  handle  a  book 
with  so  unexceptionable  a  title  as  The  Bible  in  Spain, 
His  elders  would  succumb  at  once,  particularly  if  the 
boy  had  the  good  sense  to  call  their  attention  to  the 
sub-title — '  The  Journeys,  Adventures,  and  Imprison- 
ments of  an  Englishman  in  an  Attempt  to  Circulate 
the  Scriptures  in  the  Peninsula.'  Nothing  could  be 
said  by  the  most  devout  of  seniors  against  so  prepos- 
sessing a  title-page.^  But  what  of  the  boy  who  had 
thus  passed  the  censorship  ?  What  a  revelation  of 
adventure  was  open  to  him !  Perhaps  he  would  skip 
the  '  preachy '  parts  in  which  Borrow  was  doubtless 
sincere,  although  the  sincerity  has  so  uncertain  a  ring 
to-day.  Here  are  five  passages,  for  example,  which  do 
not  seem  to  belong  to  the  book  : 

In  whatever  part  of  the  world  I,  a  poor  wanderer  in  the 
Gospel's  cause,  may  chance  to  be 

very  possibly  the  fate  of  St.  Stephen  might  overtake  me ;  but 
does  the  man  deserve  the  name  of  a  follower  of  Christ  who  would 
shrink  from  danger  of  any  kind  in  the  cause  of  Him  whom  he 
calls  his  Master  ?  '  He  who  loses  his  life  for  my  sake  shall  find  it,' 
are  words  which  the  Lord  Himself  uttered.  These  words  were 
fraught  with  consolation  to  me,  as  they  doubtless  are  to  every  one 
engaged  in  propagating  the  Gospel,  in  sincerity  of  heart,  in 
savage  and  barbarian  lands. 

Unhappy  land  !  not  until  the  pure  light  of  the  Gospel  has 
illumined  thee,  wilt  thou  learn  that  the  greatest  of  all  gifts  is 
charity ! 

'  Yet  oue  critic  of  Borrow — Jane  H.  Findlater,  in  the  Cornhill  Magazine, 
November  1899 — actually  says  that  '  The  Bible  in  Spain  was  perhaps  the 
most  ill-advised  title  that  a  well-written  book  ever  laboured  under,  giving, 
as  it  does,  the  idea  that  the  book  is  a  prolonged  tract.' 


'THE  BIBLE  IN  SPAIN'  239 

•  •••••• 

and  I  thought  that  to  convey  the  Gospel  to  a  place  so  wild  and 
remote  might  perhaps  be  considered  an  acceptable  pilgrimage  in 
the  eyes  of  my  Maker.  True  it  is  that  but  one  copy  remained 
of  those  which  I  had  brought  with  me  on  this  last  journey  ;  but 
this  reflection,  far  from  discouraging  me  in  my  projected  enter- 
prise, produced  the  contrary  effect,  as  I  called  to  mind  that,  ever 
since  the  Lord  revealed  Himself  to  man,  it  has  seemed  good  to 
Him  to  accomplish  the  greatest  ends  by  apparently  the  most  in- 
sufficient means ;  and  I  reflected  that  this  one  copy  might  serve  as 
an  instrument  for  more  good  than  the  four  thousand  nine  hundred 
and  ninety-nine  copies  of  the  edition  of  Madrid. 

I  shall  not  detain  the  course  of  my  narrative  with  reflections 
as  to  the  state  of  a  Church  which,  though  it  pretends  to  be 
founded  on  scripture,  would  yet  keep  the  light  of  scripture  from  all 
mankind,  if  possible.  But  Rome  is  fully  aware  that  she  is  not  a 
Christian  Church,  and  having  no  desire  to  become  so,  she  acts 
prudently  in  keeping  from  the  eyes  of  her  followers  the  page 
which  would  reveal  to  them  the  truths  of  Christianity. 

All  this  does  not  ring  quite  true,  and  in  any  case  it  is 
too  much  on  the  lines  of  'Sunday  reading 'to  please 
the  small  boy,  who  must,  however,  have  found  a 
thousand  things  in  that  volume  that  were  to  his  taste 
— some  of  the  wildest  adventures,  hairbreadth  escapes, 
extraordinary  meetings  again  and  again  with  unique 
people — with  Benedict  Mol,  for  example,  who  was 
always  seeking  for  treasure.  Gypsies,  bull-fighters, 
quaint  and  queer  characters  of  every  kind,  come  before 
us  in  rapid  succession.  Rarely,  surely,  have  so  many 
adventures  been  crowded  into  the  same  number  of 
pages.  Only  when  Borrow  remembers,  as  he  has  to  do 
occasionally,  that  he  is  an  agent  of  the  Bible  Society 
does  the  book  lose  its  vigour  and  its  charm.  We  have 
already  pointed  out  that  the  foundations  of  the  volume 
were  contained  in  certain  letters  written  by  Borrow  dur- 


240    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

ing  his  five  years  in  Spain  to  the  secretaries  of  the  Bible 
Society  in  London.  The  recent  publication  of  these 
letters  has  revealed  to  us  Borrow's  methods.  When 
he  had  settled  down  at  Oulton  he  took  down  his  note- 
books, one  of  which  is  before  me,  but  finding  this  was 
not  sufficient,  he  asked  the  Bible  Society  for  the  loan  of 
his  letters  to  them.^  Other  letters  that  he  hoped  to 
use  were  not  forthcoming,  as  the  following  note  from 
Miss  Gurney  to  Mrs.  Borrow  indicates : 

To  Mrs.  George  Borrow 

Earlham,  12th  June  1840. 
Dear  Mrs,   Borrow, — I  am   sorry  I  cannot  find  any  of  Mr. 
Borrow's  letters  from  Spain.     I  don't  think  we  ever  had  any,  but 

1  Borrow  had  really  written  a  great  deal  of  the  book  in  Spain.  The 
'note-book'  contained  many  of  his  adventures,  and  moreover  on  August 
20,  183G,  the  AthencBum  published  two  long  letters  from  him  under  the 
title  of  '  The  Gypsies  in  Russia  and  in  Spain,'  opening  with  the  following 
preliminary  announcement : 

We  have  been  obligingly  favoured  with  the  following  extracts  from 
letters  of  an  intelligent  gentleman,  whose  literary  labours,  the  least 
important  of  his  life,  we  not  long  since  highly  praised,  but  whose  name 
we  are  not  at  liberty,  on  this  occasion,  to  make  public.  They  contain 
some  curious  and  interesting  facts  relating  to  the  condition  of  this 
peculiar  people  in  very  distant  countries. 

The  first  letter  is  dated  September  23,  1835,  and  gives  an  account  of  his 
experiences  with  the  gypsies  in  Russia.  The  whole  of  this  account  he  incor- 
porated in  The  Gypsies  of  Spain.  Following  this  there  are  two  columns, 
dated  Madrid,  July  19,  1836,  in  which  he  gives  an  account  of  the  gj'^psies 
in  Spain.  All  the  episodes  that  he  relates  he  incorporated  in  The  Bible  in 
Spain.  The  two  letters  so  plainly  indicate  that  all  the  time  Borrow  was  in 
Spain  his  mind  was  more  filled  with  the  subject  of  the  gypsies  than  with  any 
other  question.  He  did  his  work  well  for  the  Bible  Society  no  doubt,  and 
gave  them  their  money's  worth,  but  there  is  a  humorous  note  in  the  fact  that 
Borrow  should  have  utilised  his  position  as  a  missionary — for  so  we  must 
count  him — to  make  himself  so  thoroughly  acquainted  with  gypsy  folklore 
and  gypsy  songs  and  dances  as  these  two  fragments  by  an  '  intelligent  gentle- 
man' imply.  It  is  not  strange  that  under  the  circumstances  Borrow  did  not 
wish  that  his  name  should  be  made  public. 


'THE  BIBLE  IN  SPAIN'  241 

my  brother  is  from  home  and  I  therefore  cannot  inquire  of  him.  I 
send  you  the  only  two  I  can  find.  I  am  very  glad  he  is  going  to 
publish  his  travels,  which  I  have  no  doubt  will  be  very  interesting. 
It  must  be  a  pleasant  object  to  assist  him  by  copying  the  manu- 
scripts. If  I  should  visit  Lowestoft  this  summer  I  shall  hope  to 
see  you,  but  I  have  no  immediate  prospect  of  doing  so.  With 
kind  regards  to  all  your  party,  I  am,  Dear  Mrs.  Borrow,  Yours 
sincerely,  C.  Gurney.^ 

The  Bible  Society  applied  to  in  the  same  manner 
lent  Borrow  all  his  letters  to  that  organisation  and  its 
secretaries.  Not  all  were  returned.  Many  came  to 
Dr.  Knapp  when  he  purchased  the  half  of  the  Borrow 
papers  that  were  sold  after  Borrow's  death ;  the  re- 
mainder are  in  my  possession.  It  is  a  nice  point, 
seventy  years  after  they  were  written,  as  to  whom  they 
belong.  In  any  case  the  Bible  Society  must  have  kept 
copies  of  everything,  for  when,  in  1911,  they  came  to 
publish  the  Letters'^  the  collection  was  sufficiently 
complete.  That  publication  revealed  some  interesting 
sidelights.  It  proved  on  the  one  hand  that  Borrow 
had  drawn  more  upon  his  diaries  than  upon  his  letters, 
although  he  frequently  reproduced  fragments  of  his 
diaries  in  his  letters.  It  revealed  further  the  extra- 
ordinary frankness  with  which  Borrow  wrote  to  his 
employers.  But  the  main  point  is  in  the  discovery 
revealed  to  us  that  Borrow  was  not  an  artist  in  his 
letters.  Borrow  was  never  a  good  letter  writer, 
although  I  think  that  many  of  the  letters  that  appear 

*  This  was  Miss  Catherine  Gurney,  who  was  born  in  1776^  in  Magdalen 
Street,  Norwichj  and  died  at  Lowestoft  in  1850,  aged  seventy-five.  She  twice 
presided  over  the  Earlham  home.  The  brother  referred  to  was  Joseph  John 
Gurney. 

2  Letters  of  George  Borrow  to  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society. 
Published  by  direction  of  the  Committee.  Edited  by  T.  H.  Darlow. 
Hodder  and  Stoughton,  1911. 

d 


242    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

for  the  first  time  in  these  pages  will  prove  that  his  letters 
are  very  interesting  as  contributions  to  biography.  If 
some  of  the  letters  that  helped  to  make  up  The  Bible 
in  Spain  are  interesting,  it  is  because  in  them  Borrow 
incorporated  considerable  fragments  of  anecdote  and 
adventure  from  his  note-books.  It  is  quite  a  mistake 
to  assume,  as  does  Dr.  Knapp,  that  the  '  Rev.  and  Dear 
Sir '  at  the  head  of  a  letter  was  the  only  variation. 
You  will  look  in  vain  in  the  Bible  Society  correspond- 
ence for  many  a  pearl  that  is  contained  in  The  Bible  in 
Spain,  and  you  will  look  in  vain  in  The  Bible  in  Spain 
for  many  a  sentence  which  concludes  some  of  the 
original  letters.  In  one  case,  indeed,  a  letter  concludes 
with  Heber's  hymn — 

'  From  Greenland's  Icy  Mountains,"* 

with  which  Borrow's  correspondent  must  already  have 
been  sufficiently  familiar.  But  Borrow  could  not  be 
other  than  Borrow,  and  the  secretaries  of  the  Bible 
Society  had  plentiful  matter  with  which  to  astonish 
them.  The  finished  production,  however,  is  a  fascinat- 
ing book.  You  read  it  again  and  it  becomes  still  more 
entertaining.  No  wonder  that  it  took  the  world  by 
storm  and  made  its  author  the  lion  of  a  season. 
'  A  queer  book  will  be  this  same  Bible  in  Spain,'  wrote 
Borrow  to  John  JNIurray  in  August  1841,  'containing 
all  my  queer  adventures  in  that  queer  country  ...  it 
will  make  two  nice  foolscap  octavo  volumes.'^  It  actually 
made  three  volumes,  and  Borrow  was  as  irritated  at  Mr. 
Murray's  delay  in  publishing  as  that  publisher  after- 
wards became  at  Borrow's  own  delay  over  Lavengi^o. 
The  whole  book  was  laboriously  copied  out  by  Mrs. 
Borrow.     When  this  copy  was  sent  to  INIr.  Murray,  it 

'  Samuel  Smiles  :  A  Publisher  and  his  Friends,  vol.  ii.  p.  485. 


'THE  BIBLE  IN  SPAIN'  243 

was  submitted  to  his  '  reader,'  who  reported  '  numerous 
faults  in  spelling  and  some  in  grammar,'  to  which 
criticism  Borrow  retorted  that  the  copy  was  the  work 
of  'a  country  amanuensis.'  The  book  was  published 
in  December  1842,  but  has  the  date  1843  on  its  title- 
page.^  In  its  three-volumed  form  4750  copies  of  the 
book  were  issued  by  July  1843,  after  which  countless 
copies  were  sold  in  cheaper  one-volumed  form.  Success 
had  at  last  come  to  Borrow.  He  was  one  of  the  most 
talked-of  writers  of  the  day.  His  elation  may  be 
demonstrated  by  his  discussion  with  Dawson  Turner  an 
to  whether  he  should  leave  the  manuscript  of  The  Bible 
in  Spain  to  the  Dean  and  Chapter's  Library  at  Nor- 
wich or  to  the  British  JNIuseum,  by  his  gratification 
at  the  fact  that  Sir  Robert  Peel  referred  to  his  book 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  by  his  pleasure  in  the 
many  appreciative  reviews  which,  indeed,  were  for  the 
most  part  all  that  an  ambitious  author  could  desire. 
'  Never,'  said  Tlie  Examinei^  '  was  book  more  legibly 
impressed  with  the  unmistakable  mark  of  genius.' 
*  There  is  no  taking  leave  of  a  book  like  this,'  said 
the  AthencEuin.  Better  Christmas  fare  we  have  never 
had  it  in  our  power  to  offer  our  readers.' 

The  publication  of  The  Bible  iii  Spain  made 
Borrow  famous  for  a  time.  Hitherto  he  had  been 
known  only  to  a  small  religious  community,  the 
coterie  that  ran  the  Bible  Society.  Even  the  large 
mass  of  people  who  subscribed  to  that  Society  knew 
its  agent  in  Spain  only  by  meagre  allusions  in  the 
Annual  Reports.  Now  the  world  was  to  talk  about 
him,   and    he    enjoyed   being   talked   about.      Borrow 

*  The  Bible  in  Spain ;  or  The  Journeys,  Adventures,  and  Imprisonments  of  an 
Englishman  in  an  Attempt  to  Circulate  the  Scriptures  in  the  Peninsula.  By 
George  Borrow,  author  of  The  Gypsies  of  Spain.  In  three  volumes.  Loudon  : 
John  Murray,  Albemarle  St.,.  184^. 


244    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

declared — in  1842 — that  the  five  years  he  passed  in 
Spain  were  the  most  happy  years  of  his  existence. 
But  then  he  had  not  had  a  happy  life  during  the 
previous  years,  as  we  have  seen,  and  in  Russia  he  had 
a  toilsome  task  with  an  added  element  of  uncertainty 
as  to  the  permanence  of  his  position.  The  five  years 
in  Spain  had  plentiful  adventure,  and  they  closed  in  a 
pleasant  manner.     Yet  the  year  that  followed,  even 


A  SHEKEL 

giveu  to  Borrow  by  Hasfeld,  his  Danish  friend,  as  a  talisman  when  they  parted  at  St. 
Petersburg.  In  The  Bible  in  Spain  Borrow  relates  that  he  showed  this  shekel  at 
Gibraltar  to  a  Jew,  who  exclaimed,  '  Brothers,  witness,  these  are  the  letters  of  Solomon. 
This  silver  is  blessed.    We  must  kiss  this  money.' 

though  it  found  him  almost  a  country  squire,  was  not 
a  happy  one.  Once  again  the  world  did  not  want  him 
and  his  books — not  the  Gypsies  of  Spain  for  example. 
Seven  weeks  after  publication  it  had  sold  only  to  the 
extent  of  some  three  hundred  copies.^  But  the 
happiest  year  of  Borrow's  life  was  undoubtedly 
the  one  that  followed  the  publication  of  The  Bible  in 
Spain.  Up  to  that  time  he  had  been  a  mere  adven- 
turer ;  now  he  was  that  most  joyous  of  beings — a 
successful  author ;  and  here,  from  among  his  Papers, 
is  a  carefully  preserved  relic  of  his  social  triumph : 


1  Herbert  Jenkins  :  Life,  p.  341. 


THE  BTBLE  IN  SPAIN'  245 


To  George  Borrow,  Esq.,  at  Mr.  Murray's,  Book- 
seller, Albemarle  Street. 

4  Carlton  Terrace^  Tuesday,  30th  May. 
The  Prussian  Minister  and  Madam  Bunsen  would  be  very 
happy  to  see  Mr.  Borrow  to-morrow,  Wednesday  evening,  about 
half  past  nine  o'clock  or  later,  when  some  German  national  songs 
will  be  performed  at  their  house,  which  may  possibly  suit  Mr. 
Borrow's  taste.  They  hoped  to  have  met  him  last  night  at  the 
Bishop  of  Norwich's,  but  arrived  there  too  late.  They  had 
already  commissioned  Lady  Hall  (sister  to  Madam  Bunsen)  to 
express  to  Mr.  Borrow  their  wish  for  his  acquaintance. 

In  a  letter  to  his  wife,  of  which  a  few  lines  are 
printed  in  Dr.  Knapp's  book,  he  also  writes  of  this  visit 
to  the  Prussian  Minister,  where  he  had  for  company 
'  Princes  and  Members  of  Parliament.'  '  I  was  the 
star  of  the  evening,'  he  says ;  '  I  thought  to  myself, 
"  what  a  difference  !  "  '  ^  The  following  letter  is  in  a 
more  sober  key  : 

To  Mrs.  George  Borrow,  Oulton,  Suffolk. 

Wednesday,  58  Jermyn  Street. 
Dear  Cahreta, — I  was  glad  to  receive  your  letter;    I   half 
expected  one  on  Tuesday.     I  am,  on  the  whole,  very  comfortable, 
and  people  are  kind.     I  passed  last  Sunday  at  Clapham  with  Mrs. 

'  Knapp's  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  398.  In  the  Annals  of  the  Harford  Family,  edited 
by  Alice  Harford  (Westminster  Press,  1909),  there  is  an  account  of  this 
gathering  in  a  letter  from  J.  Harford-Battersby  to  Louisa  Harford. 
There  was  present  'the  amusing  author  of  The  Bible  in  Spain,  a  man  who  is 
remarkable  for  his  extraordinary  powers  as  a  linguist,  and  for  the  originality 
of  his  character,  not  to  speak  of  the  wonderful  adventures  he  narrates,  and 
the  ease  and  facility  with  which  he  tells  them.  He  kept  us  laughing  a  good 
part  of  breakfast  time  by  the  oddity  of  his  remarks,  as  well  as  the  positive- 
ness  of  his  assertions,  often  rather  startling,  and,  like  his  books,  partaking 
of  the  marvellous.' 


246    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Browne ;  I  was  glad  to  go  there  for  it  was  a  gloomy  day.  They 
are  now  glad  enough  to  ask  me :  I  suppose  I  must  stay  in  London 
through  next  week.  I  have  an  invitation  to  two  grand  parties,  and 
it  is  as  well  to  have  something  for  one's  money.  I  called  at  the 
Bible  Society — all  remarkably  civil,  Joseph  especially  so.  I  think 
I  shall  be  able  to  manage  with  my  own  Dictionary.  There  is  now  a 
great  demand  for  Morrison.  Yesterday  I  again  dined  at  the  Murrays. 
There  was  a  family  party ;  very  pleasant.  To-morrow  I  dine  with 
an  old  school-fellow.  Murray  is  talking  of  printing  a  new  edition 
to  sell  for  five  shillings :  those  rascals,  the  Americans,  have,  it 
seems,  reprinted  it,  and  are  selling  it  for  eighteen  pence.  Murray 
says  he  shall  print  ten  thousand  copies ;  it  is  chiefly  wanted 
for  the  Colonies.  He  says  the  rich  people  and  the  libraries  have 
already  got  it,  and  he  is  quite  right,  for  nearly  three  thousand 
copies  have  been  sold  at  27s.^  There  is  no  longer  the  high 
profit  to  be  made  on  books  there  formerly  was,  as  the  rascals 
abroad  pirate  the  good  ones,  and  in  the  present  state  of  copyright 
there  is  no  help ;  we  can,  however,  keep  the  American  edition  out 
of  the  Colonies,  which  is  something.  I  have  nothing  more  to  say 
save  to  commend  you  not  to  go  on  the  water  without  me ;  perhaps 
you  would  be  overset ;  and  do  not  go  on  the  bridge  again  till  I 
come.  Take  care  of  Habismilk  and  Craffs  ;  kiss  the  little  mare 
and  old  Hen.  George  Borkow. 

The  earliest  literary  efforts  of  Borrow  in  Spain  were 
his  two  translations  of  St.  Luke's  Gospel — the  one  into 
Romany,  the  other  into  Basque.  This  last  book  he 
did  not  actually  translate  himself,  but  procured  '  from 
a  Basque  physician  of  the  name  of  Oteiza.' 

*  4760  copies  were  sold  in  the  three  volume  form  in  1843^  and  a  sixth 
and  cheaper  edition  the  same  year  sold  9000  copies. 


*THE  B115LE  IN  SPAIN' 


247 


EVANGELIOA 
Han  Lucasen  &iil89an< 

El  EVANGELIO  SEPUN  &     LUCAft 

iraDutiDo  al  ba«nini(t. 


MADRID  I 

ImpreuM da  Is  goMTAitiA  TiFOOiuriCA 
1838. 


wiiir~rTT '  • 


—  ■-^■— -^ 


TITLE-PAGE   OF  BASQUE  TRANS- 
LATION BY  OTEIZA  OF  THE 
GOSPEL  OF  ST.  LUKE 


c  Jllbajow.0  XucotA. 

BBOTOBOOO 

%'iitcaici    lit  OMc- 

Ul  EvMtGEUO  SECDW    S.  LUCIS, 

ircduclda  at  (l«iD«nt. 
o  Jialrcto  d*  lot  Ctanat  (h  EfpaAn. 


t 

1887. 


TITLE-PAGE    OF    FIRST    EDITION 

OF  ROMANY  TRANSLATION  OF 

THE  GOSPEL  OF  ST.  LUKE 


Jeb<>  xm 

I,    ^L    andr^  ocoua  matcjo  chi 
los'ainabaD  oti£  deques,  sos  le  pe' 


,1,     .    • 

'•"'V'M/.u 


nabandWWWs^GaWejeSi^yara*  ^ 
i  habia  bacharado  Citato  anCeTa  ^ 
,5  iiMii'ifinnw  d«  juaiw  o^^rft^  ^ 

X     Y  /estisles  rudeI6,peliaH3o:  '^ 
J  l>encliabe!ai»9  qne  ocolas  Gai3eye« 
fiinflron  chorea  bot^  qae  sares  os 
ateria,  por  lereljr  psjanii  buchias 
ocoQas? 

3w^SaQgue  peneto  I  quu   nanai* 
Tai^si  na  querdard*  aauwMa,  ooe*^  4 
0»  3aref  'inexareia  andre  a  mateja 
beda. 

4.     Andjat  sasta  famhign  ooolad 
deque  ;  otor  manuces ,  opnj  couies 

fierji   o-^_«l^jL*aiie  andre  Si!o^  ,  y        x^ 
U3  raar6  :  ^  peQchabelois,  que  jaBM_^P^.j^<;^ 

ces   SOS   socabel^Dao  aa4r^  Jeriua* 
Kid?         7'^-?;'.        ■* 
&    Sangiw  penelo,   qae  oauat 


Qjii3  ri  ca 


101 


lt>3tl 


.    a    ?  pendaba  oarti*  ocoraf'S*^'^ 
'hacAeh :  Mana  tnelaba  wii*wyM.-<^ 
"Shto  <ibinlai»  aodrt  son  f""'^''*'^,^ 

a  ^1  tttipsJa)  ttia  bojb  *>^  jL,;,v-/a 

icons    I. ihin   ^^tZ^JJ^       Y""^* 

Kk  de'«*ffl6SiS'  a  chlip^S?-^«a|d{j!|^j,,r 

8.    Tinnl  ocola  rodel6  y  la  P^« 
EraSiii  mequslela  auD  ocota  Ic*  ^ 

yla  tavarial-««g»»i  j'^'""'™    <l«**«^, 

o.     Asia  aat  ocono  oiuafe  mibao; 
J  si  oanai ,  la  velirU  despna.      ^-„^/ 

'^       ',1     V  ha  'acoi  yeijoe  *ad*n  ,'»BWfc 


...     . J  ysyii 

SOS   lerdaba  bengul   da  ^ 
deqne  y  otoi  berjo  habia; 


opri 

13. 


Pur  la  dicA  loiu ,  U  iin<pi»- 


TWO  PAGES  FROM  BORROWS  CORRECTED  PROOF  SHEETS  OF 
ROMANY  TRANSLATION  OF  THE  GOSPEL  OF  ST.  LUKE 


CHAPTER    XXIII 

RICHARD   FORD 

The  most  distinguished  of  Sorrow's  friends  in  the  years 
that  succeeded  his  return  from  Spain  was  Richard  Ford, 
whose  interests  were  so  largely  wrapped-up  in  the  story 
of  that  country.  Ford  was  possessed  of  a  very  interest- 
ing personality,  which  was  not  revealed  to  the  public 
until  Mr.  Rowland  E.  Prothero  issued  his  excellent 
biography^  in  1905,  although  Ford  died  in  1858.  This 
delay  is  the  more  astonishing  as  Ford's  Handbook  for 
Travellei's  in  Spain  was  one  of  the  most  famous  books  of 
its  day.  Ford's  father,  Sir  Richard  Ford,  was  a  friend 
of  William  Pitt,  and  twice  sat  in  Parliament,  being 
at  one  time  Under-Secretary  of  State  for  the  Home 
Department.  He  ended  his  official  career  as  a  police 
magistrate  at  Bow  Street,  but  deserves  to  be  better 
known  to  fame  as  the  creator  of  the  mounted  police 
force  of  London.  Ford  was  born  with  a  silver  spoon 
in  his  mouth,  inheriting  a  fortune  from  his  father, 
and  from  his  mother  an  extraordinary  taste  for  art. 
Although  called  to  the  bar  he  never  practised,  but 
spent  his  time  in  travelling  on  the  Continent,  building 
up  a  valuable  collection  of  books  and  paintings.  He 
was  three  times  married,  and  all  these  unions  seem  to 

»  The  Letters  of  Richard  Ford,  1797-1858,  edited  by  Rowland  E.  Prothero, 
M.V.O.     John  Murray,  1906. 

2i8 


RICHARD  FORD  249 

have  been  happy,  in  spite  of  an  almost  unpleasant 
celerity  in  the  second  alliance,  which  took  place  nine 
months  after  the  death  of  his  first  wife.  A  very  large 
portion  of  his  life  he  devoted  to  Spain,  which  he  knew 
so  intimately  that  in  1845  he  produced  that  remarkable 
Handbook  in  two  closely  printed  volumes,  a  most 
repellent-looking  book  in  appearance  to  those  who 
are  used  to  contemporary  typography,  usually  so 
attractive.  Ford,  in  fact,  was  so  full  of  his  subject 
that  instead  of  a  handbook  he  wrote  a  work  which 
ought  to  have  appeared  in  half  a  dozen  volumes.  In 
later  editions  the  book  was  condensed  into  one  of  Mr. 
Murray's  usual  guide-books,  but  the  curious  may  still 
enjoy  the  work  in  its  earliest  form,  so  rich  in  discus- 
sions of  the  Spanish  people,  their  art  and  architecture, 
their  history  and  their  habits.  The  greater  part  of  the 
letters  in  Mr.  Prothero's  collection  are  addressed  to 
Addington,  who  was  our  ambassador  to  Madrid  for 
some  years,  until  he  was  superseded  by  George 
Villiers,  Lord  Clarendon,  with  whom  Borrow  came  so 
much  in  contact.  Those  letters  reveal  a  remarkably 
cultivated  mind  and  an  interesting  outlook  on  Hfe,  an 
outlook  that  was  always  intensely  anti-democratic.  It 
is  impossible  to  sympathise  with  him  in  his  brutal 
reference  to  the  execution  by  the  Spaniards  of  Robert 
Boyd,  a  young  Irishman  who  was  captured  with  Torrijos 
by  the  Spanish  Government  in  1831.  Richard  Ford 
apparently  left  Spain  very  shortly  before  George  Borrow 
entered  that  country.  Ford  passed  through  Madrid  on 
his  way  to  England  in  September  1833.  He  then 
settled  near  Exeter,  purchasing  an  Elizabethan  cottage 
called  Heavitree  House,  with  twelve  acres  of  land, 
and  devoted  himself  to  turning  it  into  a  beautiful 
mansion.     Presumably  he  first  met  Borrow  in  Mr.  John 


250    GEORGE  BORKOW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Murray's  famous  drawing-room  soon  after  the  publica- 
tion of  The  Gypsies  of  Spain.  He  tells  Addington, 
indeed,  in  a  letter  of  14th  January  1841 : 

I  have  made  acquaintance  with  an  extraordinary  fellow, 
George  Borrow,  who  went  out  to  Spain  to  convert  the  gypsies. 
He  is  about  to  publish  his  failure,  and  a  curious  book  it  will  be. 
It  was  submitted  to  my  perusal  by  the  hesitating  Murray. 

Ford's  article  upon  Borrow's  book  appeared  in  The 
British  and  Foreign  Reviexv,  and  Ford  was  delighted 
that  the  book  had  created  a  sensation,  and  that  he  had 
given  sound  advice  as  to  publishing  the  manuscript. 
When  The  Bible  in  Spain  was  ready.  Ford  was  one  of 
the  first  to  read  it.     Then  he  wrote  to  John  Murray : 

I  read  Borrow  with  great  delight  all  the  way  down  per  rail. 
You  may  depend  upon  it  that  the  book  will  sell,  which  after  all  is 
the  rub. 

And  in  that  letter  Ford  describes  the  book  as  putting 
him  in  mind  of  Gil  Bias  with  'a  touch  of  Bunyan.' 
Lockhart  himself  reviewed  the  book  in  T'he  Quarte7^Iy, 
so  Ford  had  to  go  to  the  rival  organ — The  Edinburgh 
Review — receiving  £44  for  the  article,  which  sum,  he 
tells  us,  he  invested  in  Chateau  Margaux. 

Ford's  first  letter  to  Borrow  in  my  collection  is 
written  in  Spanish  : 


To  George  Borrow,  Esq.,  Oulton  Hall,  Lowestoft. 

Heavitrer  House,  Exeter,  Jan.  19,  1842. 

QuERiDo  CoMPADRE, — Mucho  m'ha  alegrado  el  buen  termino 
de  sus  trabajos  literarios  que  V.M.  me  participo.  Vaya  con  los 
picaros  de  Zincali,  buenas  pesetas  han  cobrado — siempre  he  tenido 
a  los  Sres.  M.  como  muy  hombres  de  bien,  suele  ser  que  los  que 
tratan   mucho  con  personages  de  categoria,  tomen   un  algo  del 


RICHARD  FORD  251 

grande  y  liberal.  Convega  V.M.  que  soy  critico  de  tipo,  y  que 
digo, '  Bahi  de  los  gabicotes."'  Conosco  bastante  loque  agradecera 
al  muy  noble  y  illustrado  publico — conque  sigue  V.M.  adelante  y 
no  dejes  nada  en  el  tintero,  pero  por  vida  del  Demonio,  huyese 
V.M.  de  los  historiadores  espafioles,  embusteros  y  majaderos. 
Siento  mucho  que  V.M.  haya  salido  de  Londres,  salgo  de  esto 
Sabato,  y  pienso  hacer  una  visita  de  como  unas  tres  semanas,  en 
la  casa  maternal,  como  es  mi  costumbre  por  el  mes  de  los 
aguinaldos.  Con  mucho  gusto  liubiera  praticado  con  V.M.  y 
charleado  sobre  las  cosas  de  Espafia  y  otra  chismografia  gitanesca 
y  zandungera,  por  ahora  no  entiendo  nada  de  eso.  No  dejare 
de  llevar  conmigo  los  papeles  y  documentos  que  V.M.  se  sirvio  de 
remitirme  a  Cheltenham.  Hare  de  ellos  un  paquete,  y  lo  con  flare 
d  los  Senores  Murray,  para  quando  V.M.  guste  reclamarlo.  Hare 
el  mio  posible  de  averiguar  y  aprofundicar  aquellos  misterios  y 
gente  estrambotica.  El  Senor  Murray  hijo,  me  escrive  muy 
contento  de  la  Biblia  en  Espana.  Desearia  yo  escribir  un  articulo 
sobre  asunto  tan  relleno  de  interes.  Talvez  el  articulo  mio  de  los 
Gitanos  parecera  en  el  numero  proximo,  y  en  tal  caso  ha  de  ser 
mas  util  a  V.M.  que  no  hubiera  sido  ahora.  La  vida  y  memoria 
de  las  revistas,  es  muy  corta.  Salen  como  miraposas  y  mueren  en 
un  dia.  Los  muertos  y  los  idos  no  tienen  amigos.  Los  vivos  a 
la  mesa,  y  los  muertos  k  la  huesa.  Al  istante  que  esta  imprimido 
un  nuevo  numero,  el  pasado  y  esta  olvidado  y  entra  entre  las 
cosas  del  Rey  Wamba.  Que  le  parece  a  V.M.,  ultimamente  en 
un  baile  donde  sacaron  un  Rey  de  Hubas  (twelfth  night)  tire  El 
KraUis  de  los  Zincali.  Incluyo  a  V.  Majestad  tabula,  de  veras  es 
preciso  que  yo  tengo  en  mis  venas  algunas  gotitas  de  legitimo 
errante.  El  Sefior  Gagargos  viene  a  ser  nombrado  Consul  espanol 
a  Tunis,  donde  no  le  faltaron  medios  de  adelantarse  en  el  idioma 
y  literatura  arabica.     Queda  de  S.M.  afemo.  su  amigo,  Q.B.S.M., 

Richard  Ford.^ 


^  Dear  Friend, — I  was  glad  to  hear  from  you  of  the  successful  termina- 
tion of  your  literary  work.  Fancy  those  rogues  of  Zincali !  They  have 
managed  to  make  good  money — I  always  thought  Messrs.  M.  very  decent 
people,  it  usually  happens  that  those  who  have  much  to  do  with  good  class 
of  people  become  themselves  somewhat  large-minded  and  liberal.  You 
must  admit  that  I  am  a  model  critic,  and  that  I  cry,  'Luck  to  the  Books.' 
Full  well  do  I  know  how  you  thank  the  most  noble  and  illustrious  public  ! 


252    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 
Here  is  a  second  letter  of  the  following  month  : 

February  2Qth,  Heavitree  House,  Exeter. 

Batuschca  Borkow, — I  am  glad  that  the  paper  pleased  you, 
and  I  think  it  calculated  to  promote  the  sale,  which  a  too  copious 
extracting  article  does  not  always  do,  as  people  think  that  they 
have  had  the  cream.  Napier  sent  me  .£'44  for  the  thirty-two  pages  ; 
this,  with  Kemble's  d^50,  8s.  for  the  Zincali,  nearly  reaches  dfi'lOO  : 
I  lay  it  out  in  claret,  being  not  amiss  to  do  in  the  world,  and 
richer  by  many  hundreds  a  year  than  last  year,  but  with  a  son  at 
Eton  and  daughters  coming  out,  and  an  overgrown  set  of  servants, 
money  is  never  to  be  despised,  and  I  find  that  expenditure  by 
some  infernal  principle  has  a  greater  tendency  to  increase  than 
income,  and  that  when  the  latter  increases  it  never  does  so  in  the 
ratio  of  the  former — enough  of  that.  How  to  write  an  article 
without  being  condensed — epigrammatical  and  epitomical  cream- 


Go  ahead,  therefore,  and  leave  nothing  forgotten  in  the  ink-pot ;  but  by  all 
that  is  holy,  shun  the  Spanish  historians,  who  are  liars  and  fools  !  I  regret 
very  much  that  you  should  have  left  London  ;  I  leave  here  on  Saturday 
with  the  intention  of  paying  a  visit  of  about  three  weeks  to  the  maternal 
home,  as  is  my  custom  in  the  month  of  the  Christmas  boxes.  Very  much 
would  I  have  liked  to  see  you  and  discuss  with  you  about  things  of  Spain 
and  other  gypsy  lore  and  fancy  topics,  but  of  which  at  pi'esent  nothing  do  I 
understand.  I  shall  not  fail  to  take  with  me  the  papers  and  documents 
which  you  kindly  sent  me  to  Cheltenham.  I  will  make  them  into  a  parcel 
and  leave  them  with  Messrs.  Murray,  so  that  you  can  send  for  them  when- 
ever you  like.  I  shall  do  my  best  to  penetrate  those  mysteries  and  that 
strange  people.  Mr.  Murray,  junior,  writes  in  a  pleased  tone  respecting 
The  Bible  in  Spain.  I  should  like  to  write  an  article  on  a  subject  so  full  of 
interest.  Possibly  my  article  on  the  gypsies  will  appear  in  the  next  number, 
and  in  such  case  it  will  prove  more  useful  to  you  than  if  it  appeared  now. 
The  life  and  memory  of  reviews  are  very  short.  They  appear  like  butterflies, 
and  die  in  a  day.  The  dead  and  the  departed  have  no  friends.  The  living  to 
the  feast,  the  dead  to  the  grave.  No  sooner  does  a  new  number  appear 
than  the  last  one  is  already  forgotten  and  joins  the  things  of  the  past. 
What  do  you  think  ?  At  a  party  recently  in  which  a  drawing  was  held,  I 
drew  the  Krallis  de  los  Zincali.  I  beg  to  enclose  the  table  (or  index)  for 
your  Majesty's  guidance;  really,  I  must  have  in  my  veins  a  few  drops  of  the 
genuine  wanderer.  Mr.  Gagargos  has  been  just  appointed  Spanish  Consul 
in  Tunis,  where  he  will  not  lack  means  for  progressing  in  the  Arabic 
language  and  literature. — Yours,  etc.,  R.  F. 


RICHARD  FORD  253 

skimming  that  is — I  know  not,  one  has  so   much  to  say  and  so 
little  space  to  say  it  in. 

I  rejoice  to  hear  of  your  meditated  biography  ;  really  I  am 
your  wet  nurse,  and  you  ought  to  dedicate  it  to  me ;  take  time,  but 
not  too  much  ;  avoid  all  attempts  to  write  fine  ;  just  dash  down 
the  first  genuine  uppouring  idea  and  thoughts  in  the  plainest 
language  and  that  which  comes  first,  and  then  fine  it  and  com- 
press it.  Let  us  have  a  glossary ;  for  people  cry  out  for  a 
Dragoman,  and  half  your  local  gusto  evaporates. 

I  am  amazed  at  the  want  of  profits — 'tis  sad  to  think  what 
meagre  profits  spring  from  pen  and  ink ;  but  Cervantes  died  a 
beggar  and  is  immortal.  It  is  the  devil  who  comes  into  the 
market  with  ready  money :  No  solvendum  in  futuro ;  I  well  know 
that  it  is  cash  down  which  makes  the  mare  to  go  ;  dollars  will  add 
spurs  even  to  the  Prince  of  Mustard's  paces. 

It  is  a  bore  not  receiving  even  the  crumbs  which  drop  from  such 
tables  as  those  spread  by  Mr.  Eyre  :  Murray,  however,  is  a  deep 
cove,  y  muy  pratico  en  cosas  de  libreteria:  and  he  knew  that 
the  Jirst  out  about  Afghan  would  sell  prodigiously.  I  doubt 
now  if  Lady  Sale  would  now  be  such  a  general  Sale.  Murray  builds 
solid  castles  in  Eyre.  Los  de  Espaiia  rezalo  bene  de  ser  siempre 
muy  Cosas  de  Espaiia  :  Cachaza  !  Cachaza !  firme,  firme  !  Arhse  ! 
no  dejei  nada  en  el  tintero ;  basta  que  sea  nuevo  y  muy  piquunte 
cor  sal  y  ajo :  a  los  Ingleses  le  gustan  mucho  las  Longanizas  de 
Abarbenel  y  ios  buenos  Choriyos  de  Montanches : 

El  handbook  sa  her  concluido  jeriayer:  abora  principia  el 
trabajo :  Tengo  benho  un  monton  de  papel  acombroso.  El 
menester  reducirlo  a  la  mitad  y  eso  so  hara  castratandolo  de  lo 
bueno  duro  y  particolar  a  romperse  el  alma : 

1  had  nothing  to  do  whatever  with  the  manner  in  which  the 
handbook  pufF  was  affixed  to  your  book.  I  wrote  the  said 
paper,  but  concluded  that  Murray  would  put  it,  as  usual,  in 
the  flyleaf  of  the  book,  as  he  does  in  his  others,  and  the 
Q.  Rev. 

Sabe  mucho  el  hijo — ha  imaginado  altacar  mi  obresilla  al 
flejo  de  vuestra  immortalidad  y  lo  que  le  toca  de  corazon, 
facilitarsele  la  venta. 

Yo  no  tengo  nada  en  eso  y  quede  tanalustado  amo  V'"  a  la 
primera  vista  de  aquella  hoja  volante.     Conque  Mantengare  V™ 


254    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

bueno  y  alegre  y  mande  V"  siempre,  a  S  :  S  :  S  :  y  buen  Critico, 
L  :  I :  M  :  B.,  R.  F. 

During  these  years — 1843  and  onwards — Borrow 
was  regularly  corresponding  with  Ford.  I  quote  a 
sentence  from  one  of  these  letters  : 

Borrow  writes  me  word  that  his  Life  is  nearly  ready,  and  it 
will  run  the  Bible  hull  down.  If  he  tells  truth  it  will  be  a  queer 
thing.     I  shall  review  it  for  The  Edinburgh. 


To  George  Borrow,  Esq.,  Oulton  Hall,  Lowestoft. 

123  Park  Mansions;,  Thursday,  April  13j  1843. 
Batuschca  B., — Knowing  that  you  seldom  see  a  newspaper  I 
send  you  one  in  which  Peel  speaks  very  handsomely  of  your  labour. 
Such  a  public  testimonial  is  a  good  puff,  and  I  hope  will  attract 
purchasers. — Sincerely  yours,  R.  F. 

This  speech  of  Peel's  in  the  House  of  Commons,  in 
which  in  reply  to  a  very  trivial  question  by  Dr. 
Bowring,  then  M.P.  for  Bolton,  upon  the  subject 
of  the  correspondence  of  the  British  Government  with 
Turkey,  the  great  statesman  urged  : 

It  might  have  been  said  to  Mr.  Borrow,  with  respect  to 
Spain,  that  it  would  be  impossible  to  distribute  the  Bible  in  that 
country  in  consequence  of  the  danger  of  offending  the  prejudices 
which  prevail  there  ;  yet  he,  a  private  individual,  by  showing  some 
zeal  in  what  he  believed  to  be  right,  succeeded  in  triumphing  over 
many  obstacles.^ 

Borrow  was  elated  with  the  compliment,  and  asked 
INIr.  Murray  two  months  later  if  he  could  not  advertise 
the  eulogium  with  one  of  his  books. 

1  The  Times,  April  12,  1843. 


RICHARD  FORD  255 

In  June  1844,  while  the  Handbook  for  Travellers 
in  Spain  was  going  to  press,  Ford  went  on  a  visit  to 
Borrow  at  Oulton,  and  describes  the  pair  as  *  two  rum 
coves  in  a  queer  country ' ;  and  further  gives  one  of 
the  best  descriptions  of  the  place  : 

His  house  hangs  over  a  lonely  lake  covered  with  wild  fowl,  and 
is  girt  with  dark  firs  tln'ough  which  the  wind  sighs  sadly. 

When  the  Handbook  for  Travellers  in  Spain  was 
published  in  1845  it  was  agreed  that  Borrow  should 
write  the  review  for  The  Quarterly.  Instead  of  writing 
a  review  Borrow,  possessed  by  that  tactlessness  which 
so  frequently  overcame  him,  wrote  an  article  on  '  Spain 
and  the  Spaniards,'  very  largely  of  abuse,  an  absolutely 
useless  production  from  the  point  of  view  of  Ford  the 
author,  and  of  Lockhart,  his  editor  friend.  Borrow 
never  forgave  Lockhart  for  returning  this  manuscript, 
but  that  it  had  no  effect  on  Ford's  friendship  is  shown 
by  the  following  letter,  dated  1846  (p.  258),  written 
long  after  the  unfortunate  episode,  and  another  in 
Dr.  Knapp's  Life^  dated  1851  : 


To  JVIrs.  Borrow,  Oulton  Hall,  Lowestoft. 

Oct.  6,  1844,  Cheltenham. 

My  dear  Madam, — I  trouble  you  with  a  line  to  say  that  I 
have  received  a  letter  from  Don  Jorge,  from  Constantinople.  He 
evidently  is  now  anxious  to  be  quietly  back  again  on  the  banks  of 
your  peaceful  lake ;  he  speaks  favourably  of  his  health,  which  has 
been  braced  up  by  change  of  air,  scenery,  and  occupations,  so  I 
hope  he  will  get  through  next  winter  without  any  bronchitis,  and 
go  on  with  his  own  biography. 

He  asks  me  when  Handbook  will  be  done  ?  Please  to  tell  him 
that  it  is  done  and  printing,  but  that  it  runs  double  the  length 


256    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

which  was  contemplated :  however,  it  will  be  a  queer  book,  and 
tell  him  that  we  reserve  it  until  his  return  to  i-eview  it.  I  am 
now  on  the  point  of  quitting  this  pretty  place  and  making  for  my 
home  at  Hevitre,  where  we  trust  to  arrive  next  Thursday. 

Present  my  best  compliments  to  your  mother,  and  believe  me, 
your  faithful  and  obedient  servant,  Rch.  Ford. 

When  you  write  to  Don  Jorge  thank  him  for  his  letter. 


To  George  Borrow,  Esq.,  Oulton  Hall,  Lowestoft. 

123  Paruamknt  Street, 
Grosvenor  Square,  Feb.  17,  1845. 

Dear  Borrow, — El  hombre  pi-opose  pew  Dios  es  que  dispose. 
I  had  hope  to  have  run  down  and  seen  you  and  yours  in  your 
quiet  Patmos;  but  the  Sangrados  will  it  otherwise.  I  have  never 
been  quite  free  from  a  tickling  pain  since  the  bronchitis  of  last 
year,  and  it  has  recently  assumed  the  form  of  extreme  relaxation 
and  irritation  in  the  uvula,  which  is  that  pendulous  appendage 
which  hanss  over  the  orifice  of  the  throat.  Mine  has  become  so 
seriously  elongated  that,  after  submitting  for  four  days  last  week 
to  its  being  burnt  with  caustic  every  morning  in  the  hopes  that  it 
might  thus  crimp  and  contract  itself,  I  have  been  obliged  to  have 
it  amputated.  This  has  left  a  great  soreness,  which  militates 
against  talking  and  deglutition,  and  would  render  our  charming 
chats  after  the  Madeira  over  la  cheminea  del  cueldo  inadvisable. 
I  therefore  defer  the  visit :  my  Sangrado  recommends  me,  when 
the  summer  advances,  to  fly  away  into  change  of  air,  change  of 
scene ;  in  short,  must  seek  an  hejira  as  you  made.  How  strange 
the  coincidence  !  but  those  who  have  wandered  much  about 
require  periodical  migration,  as  the  encaged  quail  twice  a  year 
beats  its  breast  against  the  wires. 

I  am  not  quite  determined  where  to  go,  whether  to  Scotland 
and  the  sweet  heath-aired  hills,  or  to  the  wild  rocks  and  clear 
trout  streams  of  the  Tyrol ;  it  is  a  question  between  the  gun  and 
the  rod.  If  I  go  north  assuredly  si  Dios  quiere  I  will  take  your 
friendly  and  peaceful  abode  in  my  way. 

As  to  my  immediate  plans  I  can  say  nothing  before  Thursday, 


RICHARD  FORD  257 

when  the  Sangrado  is  to  report  on  some  diagnosis  which  he 
expects. 

Meanwhile  Handbook  is  all  but  out,  and  Lockhart  and  Murray 
are  eager  to  have  you  in  the  Q.  R.  I  enclose  you  a  note  from  the 
editor.  How  feel  you  inclined  ?  I  would  send  you  down  30 
sheets,  and  you  might  run  your  eye  through  them.  There  are 
plums  in  the  pudding'.  Richard  Ford. 

A  proof  in  slip  form  of  the  rejected  review,  with 
Borrow's  corrections  written  upon  it,  is  in  my  possession. 
Our  author  pictures  Gibraltar  as  a  human  entity  thus 
addressing  Spain : 

Accursed  land  !  I  hate  thee,  and  far  from  being  a  defence,  will 
invariably  prove  a  thorn  in  thy  side. 

And  so  on  through  many  sentences  of  excited  rhetoric. 
Borrow  forgot  while  he  wrote  that  he  had  a  book  to 
review — a  book,  moreover,  issued  by  the  publishing 
house  which  issued  the  periodical  in  which  his  review 
was  to  appear.  And  this  book  was  a  book  in  ten 
thousand — a  veritable  mine  of  information  and  out  of 
the  way  learning.  Surely  this  slight  reference  amid 
many  dissertations  of  his  own  upon  Spain  was  to  damn 
his  friend's  book  with  faint  praise  : 

A  Handbook  is  a  Handbook  after  all,  a  very  useful  thing,  but 
still — the  fact  is  that  we  live  in  an  age  of  humbug,  in  which 
everything,  to  obtain  note  and  reputation,  must  depend  less  upon 
its  own  intrinsic  merit  than  on  the  name  it  bears.  The  present 
book  is  about  one  of  the  best  books  ever  written  upon  Spain  ; 
but  we  are  afraid  that  it  will  never  be  estimated  at  its  proper 
value  ;  for  after  all  a  Handbook  is  a  Handbook. 

Yet  successful  as  was  Ford's  Handbook,  it  is  doubtful 
but  that  Borrow  was  right  in  saying  that  it  had  better 
have  been  called    Wanderwgs  in   Spain  or    Woiiders 

R 


258    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

of  the  Peninsula.  How  much  more  gracious  was  the 
statement  of  another  great  authority  on  Spain — Sir 
William  Stirling- Maxwell — who  said  that  'so  great  a 
literary  achievement  had  never  before  been  performed 
under  so  humble  a  title.'  The  article,  however, 
furnishes  a  trace  of  autobiography  in  the  statement 
by  Borrow  that  he  had  long  been  in  the  habit  of 
reading  Don  Quixote  once  every  nine  years.  Yet 
he  tells  us  that  he  prefers  Le  Sage's  Gil  Bias  to 
Don  Quixote,  'the  characters  introduced  being  certainly 
more  true  to  nature.'  But  altogether  we  do  not  wonder 
that  Lockhart  declined  to  publish  the  article.  Here  is 
the  last  letter  in  my  possession ;  after  this  there  is  one 
in  the  Knapp  collection  dated  1851,  acknowledging  a 
copy  of  Lavengro,  in  which  Ford  adds :  '  Mind  when 
you  come  to  see  the  Exhibition  you  look  in  here,  for 
I  long  to  have  a  chat,'  and  so  the  friendship  appears 
to  have  collapsed  as  so  many  friendships  do.  Ford 
died  at  Heavitree  in  1858  : 


To  George  Borrow,  Esq.,  Oulton  Hall,  Lowestoft 

HeavitreEj  Jany.  28,  1846. 

QuERiDo  Don  Jorge, — How  are  you  getting  on  in  health  and 
spirits  ?  and  how  has  this  absence  of  winter  suited  you  ?  Are  you 
inclined  for  a  run  up  to  town  next  week  ?  I  propose  to  do  so, 
and  Murray,  who  has  got  Washington  Irving,  etc.,  to  dine  with 
him  on  Wednesday  the  4th,  writes  to  me  to  know  if  I  thought 
you  could  be  induced  to  join  us.  Let  me  whisper  in  your  ear, 
yea  :  it  will  do  you  good  and  give  change  of  air,  scene  and 
thought :  we  will  go  and  beat  up  the  renowned  Billy  Harper,  and 
see  how  many  more  ribs  are  stoved  in. 

I  have  been  doing  a  paper  for  the  Q.  R.  on  Spanish  Architec- 
ture ;  how  gets  on  the  Lavengro .?  I  see  the  '  gypsies '  are  coming 
out  in  the  Colonial^,  which  will  have  a  vast  sale. 


RICHARD  FORD  259 

John  Murray  seems  to  be  flourishing  in  spite  of  corn  and 
railomania. 

Remember  me  kindly  and  respectfully  to  your  Ladies,  and  beg 
them  to  tell  you  what  good  it  will  do  you  to  have  a  frisk  up  to 
town,  and  a  little  quiet  chat  with  your  pal  and  amigo, 

Richard  Ford. 


CHAPTER    XXIV 

IN  EASTERN  EUROPE 

In  1844  Borrow  set  out  for  the  most  distant  holiday 
that  he  was  ever  to  undertake.  Passing  through 
London  in  March  1844,  he  came  under  the  critical 
eye  of  Ehzabeth  Rigby,  afterwards  Lady  Eastlake, 
that  formidable  critic  who  four  years  later — in  1848 — 
wrote  the  cruel  review  of  Jane  Eyre  in  T/te  Quarteidy 
that  gave  so  much  pain  to  Charlotte  Bronte.  She  was 
not  a  nice  woman.  These  sharp,  '  clever '  women- 
critics  rarely  are  ;  and  Borrow  never  made  a  pleasant 
impression  when  such  women  came  across  his  path — 
instance  Harriet  Martineau,  Frances  Cobbe,  and  Agnes 
Strickland.  We  should  sympathise  with  him,  and  not 
count  it  for  a  limitation,  as  some  of  his  biographers 
have  done.  The  future  Lady  Eastlake  thus  disposes 
of  Borrow  in  her  one  reference  to  him  : 

March  20. — Borrow  came  in  the  evening  ;  now  a  fine  man,  but 
a  most  disagreeable  one  ;  a  kind  of  character  that  would  be  most 
dano-erous  in  rebellious  times — one  that  would  suffer  or  persecute 
to  the  utmost.  His  face  is  expressive  of  strong-headed  determina- 
tion.^ 

Quoting   this   description   of   Borrow,   Dr.    Knapp 
describes   it  as   '  shallow  '—for    '  he    was    one    of    the 

1  Journals  and  Correspondence  of  Lady  Eastlake,  edited  by  her  nephew, 
Charles  Eastlake  Smith,  vol.  i.  p.  124.     John  Murray,  1895. 
260 


IN  EASTERN  EUROPE  261 

kindest  of  men,  as  my  documents  show.'  The  descrip- 
tion is  shallow  enough,  because  the  writer  had  no  kind 
of  comprehension  of  Borrow,  but  then,  perhaps,  his 
champion  had  not.  Borrow  was  neither  one  of  the 
'  kindest  of  men '  nor  the  reverse.  He  was  a  good 
hater  and  a  whole-hearted  lover,  and  to  be  thus  is 
to  fill  a  certain  uncomfortable  but  not  discreditable 
place  in  the  scheme  of  things.  About  a  month  later 
Borrow  was  on  the  way  to  the  East,  travelling  by 
Paris  and  Vienna.  From  Paris  he  wrote  to  Mr.  John 
Murray  that  Vidocq  '  wished  much  to  have  a  copy 
of  my  Gypsies  in  Spain,'  but  suspects  the  Frenchman 
of  desiring  to  produce  a  compressed  translation.  Will 
Mr.  Murray  have  the  book  translated  into  French  ? 
he  asks,  and  so  circumvent  his  wily  friend.^  In  June 
he  is  in  Buda  Pesth,  whence  he  wrote  to  his  wife ; 

To  Mrs.  George  Borrow,  Oulton,  Lowestoft 

Pesth,  Hungaky,  14<A  June  1844. 
My  dearest  Carbeta, — I  was  so  glad  to  get  your  letter  which 
reached  me  about  nine  days  ago ;  on  receiving  it,  I  instantly 
made  preparations  for  quitting  Vienna,  but  owing  to  two  or  three 
things  which  delayed  me,  I  did  not  get  away  till  the  20th  ;  I  hope 
that  you  received  the  last  letter  which  I  sent,  as  I  doubt  not  that 
you  are  all  anxious  to  hear  from  me.  You  cannot  think  how 
anxious  I  am  to  get  back  to  you,  but  since  I  am  already  come  so 
far,  it  will  not  do  to  return  before  my  object  is  accomplished. 
Heaven  knows  that  I  do  not  travel  for  travelling's  sake,  having 
a  widely  different  object  in  view.  I  came  from  Vienna  here  down 
the  Danube,  but  I  daresay  I  shall  not  go  farther  by  the  river, 
but  shall  travel  through  the  country  to  Bucharest  in  Wallachia, 
which  is  the  next  place  I  intend  to  visit ;  but  Hungary  is  a  widely 
different  country  to  Austria,  not  at  all  civilised,  no  coaches,  etc., 
but  only  carts  and  wagons ;  however,  it  is  all  the  same  thing  to 

^  Life  of  Borrow  by  Herbert  Jenkins^  p.  361. 


262    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

me  as  I  am  quite  used  to  rough  it ;  Bucharest  is  about  three 
hundred  miles  from  here ;  the  country,  as  I  have  said  before,  is 
wild,  but  the  people  are  quite  harmless — it  is  only  in  Spain  that 
any  danger  is  to  be  feared  from  your  fellow  creatures.  In 
Bucharest  I  shall  probably  stay  a  fortnight.  I  have  a  letter  to  a 
French  gentleman  there  from  Baron  Taylor.  Pesth  is  very  much 
like  Edinburgh — there  is  an  old  and  a  new  town,  and  it  is  only 
the  latter  which  is  called  Pesth,  the  name  of  the  old  is  Buda, 
which  stands  on  the  side  of  an  enormous  mountain  overlooking 
the  new  town,  the  Danube  running  between.  The  two  towns 
together  contain  about  120,000  inhabitants ;  I  delivered  the 
letter  which  dear  Woodfall  was  kind  enough  to  send  ;  it  was 
to  a  person,  a  Scotchman,  who  is  superintending  in  the  building 
of  the  chain  bridge  over  the  Danube  ;  he  is  a  very  nice  person,  and 
has  shown  me  every  kind  of  civility ;  indeed,  every  person  here  is 
very  civil ;  yesterday  I  dined  at  the  house  of  a  rich  Greek  ;  the 
dinner  was  magnificent,  the  only  drawback  was  that  they  pressed 
me  too  much  to  eat  and  drink;  there  was  a  deal  of  champagne, 
and  they  would  make  me  drink  it  till  I  was  almost  sick,  for  it  is 
a  wine  that  I  do  not  like,  being  far  too  sweet.  Since  I  have  been 
here  I  have  bathed  twice  in  the  Danube,  and  find  myself  much 
the  better  for  it;  I  both  sleep  and  eat  better  than  I  did.  I  have 
also  been  about  another  chapter,  and  get  on  tolerably  well ;  were 
I  not  so  particular  I  should  get  on  faster,  but  I  wish  that  every- 
thing that  I  write  in  this  next  be  first-rate.  Tell  Mama  that  this 
chapter  begins  with  a  dialogue  between  her  and  my  father;  I 
have  likewise  contrived  to  bring  in  the  poor  old  dog  in  a  manner 
which  I  think  will  be  interesting.  I  began  this  letter  some  days 
ago,  but  have  been  so  pleasantly  occupied  that  I  have  made  little 
progress  till  now.  Clarke,  poor  fellow,  does  not  know  how  to 
make  enough  of  me.  He  says  he  could  scarcely  believe  his  eyes 
Avhen  he  first  received  the  letter,  as  he  has  just  got  The  Bible  in 
Spain  from  England,  and  was  reading  it.  This  is  the  17th,  and 
in  a  few  days  I  start  for  a  place  called  Debreczen,  from  whence 
I  shall  proceed  gradually  on  my  journey.  The  next  letter  which 
you  receive  will  probably  be  from  Transylvania,  the  one  after  that 
from  Bucharest,  and  the  third  D.V.  from  Constantinople.  If  you 
like  you  may  write  to  Constantinople,  directing  it  to  the  care  of 
the  English  Ambassador,  but  be  sure  to  pay  the  postage. 


IN  EASTERN  EUROPE  263 

Before   I   left   Vienna  Baron  Hammer,  the  great  Orientalist, 
called  upon  me;  his  wife  was  just  dead,  poor  thing,  which  pre- 
vented him  showino-  me  all  the  civility  which  he  would  otherwise 
have    done.     He   took   me  to   the  Imperial  Library.     Both   my 
books  were  there,  Gypsies  and  Bible.     He  likewise  procured  me  a 
ticket  to  see  the  Imperial  treasure.     (Tell  Henrietta  that  I  saw 
there  the  diamond  of  Charles  the  Bold  ;  it  is  as  large  as  a  walnut.) 
I  likewise  saw  the  finest  opal,  as  I  suppose,  in  the  world  ;  it  was 
the  size  of  a  middling  pear  ;  there  was  likewise  a  hyacinth  as  big 
as  a  swan''s  egg ;  I   likewise  saw  a  pearl  so  large  that  they  had 
wrought  the  figure  of  a  cock  out  of  it,  and  the  cock  was  somewhat 
more  than  an  inch  high,  but  the  thing  which  struck  me  most  was 
the  sword   of  Tamerlane,  generally   called  Timour   the   Tartar ; 
both  the  hilt  and  scabbard  were  richly  adorned  with    diamonds 
and  emeralds,  but  I  thought  more  of  the  man  than  I  did  of  them, 
for  he  was  the  greatest  conqueror  the  world    ever   saw  (I   have 
spoken  of  him  in  Lavengro  in  the  chapter  about  David  Haggart). 
Nevertheless,  although  I  have  seen  all  these  fine  things,  I  shall 
be  glad  to  get  back  to  my  Carreta  and  my  darling  mother  and  to 
dear  Hen.     From  Debreczen  I  hope  to  write  to  kind  dear  Wood- 
fall,  and  to  Lord  from  Constantinople,     I  must  likewise  write  to 
Hasfeld.     The  mulct  of  thirty  pounds  upon  Russian  passports  is 
only  intended  for  the  subjects  of  Russia.     I  see  by  the  journals 
that  the  Emperor   has   been    in    England ;  I  wonder  what  he  is 
come  about ;  however,  the  less  I  say  about  that  the  better,  as  I 
shall  soon  be  in  his  country.      Tell  Hen  that  I  have  got  her  a 
large    piece    of    Austrian    gold    money,    worth    about    forty-two 
shillings ;  it  is  quite  new  and  very  handsome ;  considerably  wider 
than  the  Spanish  ounce,  only  not  near  so  thick,  as  might  be  expected, 
being  of  considerable  less  value ;    when  I  get  to  Constantinople 
I  will  endeavour  to  get  a  Turkish  gold  coin.     I  have  also  got  a 
new  Austrian  silver  dollar  and  a  half  one  ;  these  are  rather  cumber- 
some, and  I  don't  care  much  about  them — as  for  the  large  gold 
coin,  I  carry  i  fe  in  my  pocket-book,  which  has  been  of  great  use  to 
me  hitherto.     I  have  not  yet  lost  anything,  only  a  pocket  hand- 
kerchief or  two  as   usual ;  but   I  was  obliged  to  buy  two  other 
shirts  at  Vienna ;  the  weather  is  so  hot,  that  it  is  quite  necessary 
to  change  them  every  other  day  ;  they  were  beautiful  linen  ones, 
and  I  think  you  will  like  them  when  you  see.     I  shall  be  so  glad  to 


264    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

get  home  and  continue,  if  possible,  my  old  occupation.  I  hope 
my  next  book  will  sell ;  one  comfort  is  that  nothing  like  it 
has  ever  been  published  before.  I  hope  you  all  get  on  comfort- 
ably, and  that  you  catch  some  fish.  I  hope  my  dear  mother  is 
well,  and  that  she  will  continue  with  you  till  the  end  of  July  at 
least ;  ah  !  that  is  my  month,  I  was  born  in  it,  it  is  the  pleasantest 
month  in  the  year;  would  to  God  that  my  fate  had  worn  as 
pleasant  an  aspect  as  the  month  in  which  I  was  born.  God  bless 
you  all.  Write  to  me,  to  the  care  of  the  British  Embassy,  Con- 
stantinople.    Kind  remembrances  to  Pilgrim. 

In  the  intervening  journey  between  Pesth  and  Con- 
stantinople he  must  have  talked  long  and  wandered 
far  and  wide  among  the  gypsies,  for  Charles  L.  Brace 
in  his  Hungary  in  1851  gives  us  a  glimpse  of  him  at 
Grosswardein  holding  conversation  with  the  gypsies : 

They  described  his  appearance — his  tall,  lank,  muscular  form 
— and  mentioned  that  he  had  been  much  in  Spain,  and  I  saw  that 
it  must  be  that  most  ubiquitous  of  travellers,  Mr.  Borrow. 

The  four  following  letters  require  no  comment : 


To  Mrs.  George  Borrow,  Oulton,  Lowestoft 

Debreczen,  Hungary,  Qth  July  1844. 

My  darling  Carreta, — I  write  to  you  from  Debreczen,  a  town 
in  the  heart  of  Hungary,  where  I  have  been  for  the  last  fortnight 
with  the  exception  of  three  days  during  which  I  was  making  a 
journey  to  Tokay,  which  is  about  forty  miles  distant.  My  reason 
for  staying  here  so  long  was  my  liking  the  place  where  I  have 
experienced  every  kind  of  hospitality ;  almost  all  the  people  in 
these  parts  are  Protestants,  and  they  are  so  fond  of  the  very  name 
of  Englishmen  that  when  one  arrives  they  scarcely  know  how  to 
make  enough  of  him ;  it  is  well  the  place  is  so  remote  that  very 
few  are  ever  seen  here,  perhaps  not  oftener  than  once  in  ten  years, 
for  if  some  of  our  scamps  and  swell  mob  were  once  to  find  their 
way  there  the  good  people  of  Hungarv  would  soon  cease  to  have 


IN  EASTERN  EUROPE  265 

much  respect  for  the  English  in  general ;  as  it  is  they  think  that 
they  are  all  men  of  honour  and  accomplished  gentlemen  whom  it 
becomes  them  to  receive  well  in  order  that  they  may  receive  from 
them  lessons  in  civilisation  ;  I  wonder  what  they  would  think  if 
they  were  to  meet  such  fellows  as  Squarem  and  others  whom  I 
could  mention.  I  find  my  knowledge  of  languages  here  of  great 
use,  and  the  people  are  astonished  to  hear  me  speak  French, 
Italian,  German,  Russian,  and  occasionally  Gypsy.  I  have  already 
met  with  several  Gypsies  ;  those  who  live  abroad  in  the  wildernesses 
are  quite  black;  the  more  civilised  wander  about  as  musicians, 
playing  on  the  fiddle,  at  which  they  are  very  expert,  they  speak 
the  same  languages  as  those  in  England,  with  slight  variations,  and 
upon  the  whole  they  understand  me  very  well.  Amongst  other 
places  I  have  been  to  Tokay,  where  I  drank  some  of  the  wine.  I 
am  endeavouring  to  bring  two  or  three  bottles  to  England,  for  I 
thought  of  my  mother  and  yourself  and  Hen.,  and  I  have  got  a 
little  wooden  case  made ;  it  is  very  sweet  and  of  a  pale  straw 
colour;  whether  I  shall  be  able  to  manage  it  I  do  not  know; 
however,  I  shall  make  the  attempt.  At  Tokay  the  wine  is  only 
two  shillings  the  bottle,  and  I  have  a  great  desire  that  you  should 
taste  some  of  it.  I  sincerely  hope  that  we  shall  soon  all  meet 
together  in  health  and  peace.  I  shall  be  glad  enough  to  get 
home,  but  since  I  am  come  so  far  it  is  as  well  to  see  as  much  as 
possible.  Would  you  think  it,  the  Bishop  of  Debreczen  came  to 
see  me  the  other  day  and  escorted  me  about  the  town,  followed  by 
all  the  professors  of  the  college ;  this  was  done  merely  because  I 
was  an  Englishman  and  a  Protestant,  for  here  they  are  almost  all 
of  the  reformed  religion  and  full  of  love  and  enthusiasm  for  it.  It 
is  probable  that  you  will  hear  from  Woodfall  in  a  day  or  two ; 
the  day  before  yesterday  I  wrote  to  him  and  begged  him  to  write 
to  you  to  let  you  know,  as  I  am  fearful  of  a  letter  miscarrying  and 
your  being  uneasy.  This  is  unfortunately  post  day  and  I  must 
send  away  the  letter  in  a  very  little  time,  so  that  I  cannot  say  all 
to  you  that  I  could  wish  ;  I  shall  stay  here  about  a  week  longer, 
and  from  here  shall  make  the  best  of  my  way  to  Transylvania  and 
Bucharest ;  I  shall  stay  at  Bucharest  about  a  fortnight,  and  shall 
then  dash  off  for  Constantinople — I  shan't  stay  there  long — but 
when  once  there  it  matters  not  as  it  is  a  civilised  country  from 
which  sti^rt  steamers  to  any  part  where  you  may  want  to  go.     I 


266    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

hope  to  receive  a  letter  from  you  there.     You  cannot  imagine 
what  pleasure  I   felt  when  I  got  your  last.     Oh,  it  was  such  a 
comfort  to  me  !     I  shall  have  much  to  tell  you  when  I  get  back. 
Yesterday  I  went  to  see  a  poor  wretch  who  is  about  to  be  hanged  ; 
he  committed  a  murder  here  two  years  ago,  and  the  day  after  to- 
morrow he  is  to  be  executed — they  expose  the  people  here  who 
are  to  suffer  three  days  previous  to  their  execution — I  found  him 
in  a  small  apartment  guarded  by  soldiers,  with  hundreds  of  people 
staring  at  him  through  the  door  and  the  windows;  I  was  admitted 
into  the  room  as  I  went  with  two  officers ;  he  had  an  enormous 
chain  about  his  waist  and  his  feet  were  manacled  ;  he  sat  smoking 
a  pipe ;  he  was,  however,  very  penitent,  and  said  that  he  deserved 
to  die,  as  well  he  might;  he  had  murdered  four  people,  beating 
out  their  brains  with  a  club;  he  was  without  work,  and  requested 
of  an  honest  man  here  to  receive  him  into  his  house  one  night 
until  the  morning.     In  the  middle  of  the  night  he  got  up,  and 
with  his  brother,  who  was  with  him,  killed  every  person  in  the 
house  and  then  plundered  it;  two  days  after,  he  was  taken;  his 
brother  died  in  prison ;  I  gave  him  a  little  money,  and  the  gentle- 
man who  was  with  me  gave  him  some  good  advice ;    he    looked 
most  like  a  wild  beast,  a  huge  mantle  of  skin  covered  his  body; 
for  nine  months  he  had  not  seen  the  daylight ;    but  now  he  is 
brought  out  into  a  nice  clean  apartment,  and  allowed  to  have 
everything  he  asks  for,  meat,  wine,  tobacco — nothing  is  refused  him 
during  these  last  three  days.     I  cannot  help  thinking  that  it  is  a 
great  cruelty  to  keep  people  so  long  in  so  horrid  a  situation  ;  it  is 
two   years   nearly   since   he    has    been    condemned.      Do    not   be 
anxious  if  you   do  not  hear  from   me   regularly  for  some  time. 
There  is  no  escort  post  in  the  countries  to  which  I  am   going. 
God  bless  my  mother,  yourself,  and  Hen.  G.  B. 


To  Mrs.  George  Borrow,  Oulton,  Lowestoft 

Hermanstadt,  July  30,  1844. 

My  dearest  Carreta, — I  write  to  you  aline  or  two  from  this 
place ;  it  is  close  upon  the  frontier  of  Wallachia.  I  hope  to  be  in 
Bucharest  in  a  few  days — I  have  stopped  here  for  a  day  owing  to 
some  difficulty  in  getting  horses — I  shall  hasten  onward  as  quick  as 


IN  EASTERN  EUROPE  267 

possible.     In   Bucharest   there   is  an  English    Consul,    so    that  I 
shall  feel  more  at  home  than  I  do  here.     I  am  only  a  few  miles  now 
from  the  termination  of  the  Austrian  dominions,  their  extent  is 
enormous,  the  whole  length  of  Hungary  and  Transylvania  ;  I  shall 
only  stay  a  few  days  in  Bucharest  and  shall  then  dash  off  straight 
for  Constantinople  ;  I  have  no  time  to  lose  as  there  is  a  high  ridge 
of  mountains  to  cross  called  the  Balkans,  where  the  winter  commences 
at  the  beginning  of  September.     I  thought  you   would  be  glad  to 
hear  from  me,  on  which  account  I  write.     I  sent  off  a  letter  about 
a  week  ago  from  Klausenburg,  which  I  hope  you  will  receive.     I 
have  written  various  times  from   Hungary,   though   whether  the 
letters  have  reached  you  is  more    than    I   can   say.     I   wrote  to 
Woodfall  from  Debreczen.     I  have  often  told  you  how  glad  I  shall 
be  to  get  home  and  see  you  again.     If  I  have  tarried,  it  has  only 
been  because  I  wished  to  see  and  learn  as  much  as  I  could,  for  it 
was  no  use  coming  to  such  a  distance  for  nothing.     By  the  time 
I  return  I  shall  have  made  a  most  enormous  journey,  such  as  very 
few  have  made.     The  place  from  which  I  write  is  very   romantic, 
being  situated  at  the  foot  of  a  ridge  of  enormous  mountains  which 
extend  to  the  clouds,  they  look  higher  than   the  Pyrenees.     My 
health,  thank  God,  is  very  good.    I  bathed  to-day  and  feel  all  the 
better  for  it ;  I  hope  you  are  getting  on  well,  and  that  all  our  dear 
family  is  comfortable.     I  hope  my  dear  mother  is  well.     Oh,  it  is 
so  pleasant  to  hope  that  I  am  still  not  alone  in  the  world,  and  that 
there  are  those  who  love  and  care   for   me  and  pray    for  me.     I 
shall    be    very    glad    to   get   to    Constantinople,    as    from    there 
there   is  no  difficulty  ;  and  a  great  part  of  the   way   to   Russia 
is  by  sea,  and  when    I  am  in  Russia    I    am  almost  at  home.     I 
shall    write    to    you    again    from    Bucharest    if  it    please    God. 
It    is    not    much    more    than    eighty     miles     from     here,    but 
the  way  lies  over  the   mountains,   so  that  the  journey   will  take 
three  or  four  days.    We  travel  here  in  tilted  carts  drawn  by  ponies  ; 
the  carts  are  without  springs,  so  that  one  is  terribly  shaken.    It  is, 
however,  very  healthy,  especially  when  one  has  a  strong  constitution. 
The  carts  are  chiefly  made  of  sticks  and  wickerwork  ;   they  are,  of 
course,  very  slight,  and  indeed  if  they  were  not  so  they  would  soon 
go  to  pieces  owing  to  the  jolting.     I  read  your  little   book   every 
morning  ;  it  is  true  that  I  am  sometimes  wrong  with  respect  to  the 
date,  but  I  soon  get  right  again  ;  oh,  I  shall  be  so  glad  to  see  you 


268    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

and  my  mother  and  old  Hen.  and  Lucy  and  the  whole  dear  circle. 
I  hope  Crups  is  well,  and  the  horse.  Oh,  I  shall  be  so  glad  to  come 
back.  God  bless  you,  my  heart's  darling,  and  dear  Hen. ;  kiss  her 
for  me,  and  my  mother.  Geouge  Boerow. 


To  Mrs.  George  Borrow,  Oulton,  Lowestoft 

Bucharest,  August  5,  1844. 

My  dearest  Carreta, — I  write  you  a  few  lines  from  the  house 
of  the  Consul,  Mr.  Colquhoun,  to  inform  you  that  I  arrived  at 
Bucharest  quite  safe :  the  post  leaves  to-day,  and  Mr.  C.  has 
kindly  permitted  me  to  send  a  note  along  with  the  official 
despatches.  I  am  quite  well,  thank  God,  but  I  thought  you  would 
like  to  hear  from  me.  Bucharest  is  in  the  province  of  Wallachia 
and  close  upon  the  Turkish  frontier.  I  shall  remain  here  a  week 
or  two  as  I  find  the  place  a  very  interesting  one  ;  then  I  shall  pro- 
ceed to  Constantinople.  I  wrote  to  you  from  Hermanstadt  last 
week  and  the  week  previous  from  Clausenburgh,  and  before  I  leave 
I  shall  write  again,  and  not  so  briefly  as  now.  I  have  experienced 
every  possible  attention  from  Mr.  C,  who  is  a  very  delighful 
person,  and  indeed  everybody  is  very  kind  and  attentive.  I  hope 
sincerely  that  you  and  Hen.  are  quite  well  and  happy,  and  also  my 
dear  mother.     God  bless  you,  dearest.  George  Borrow. 


To  Mrs.  George  Borrow,  Oulton,  Lowestoft 

Bucharest,  August  14,  1844. 
My  DARLING  Carreta, — To-morrow  or  the  next  day  I  leave 
Bucharest  for  Constantinople,  I  wrote  to  you  on  my  arrival  a  few 
days  ago,  and  promise  to  write  again  before  my  departure.  I  shall 
not  be  sorry  to  get  to  Constantinople,  as  from  thence  I  can  go  where- 
everl  think  proper  without  any  difficulty.  Since  I  have  been  here, 
Mr.  Colquhoun,  the  British  Consul-General,  has  shown  me  every 
civility,  and  upon  the  whole  I  have  not  passed  the  time  disagreeably. 
I  have  been  chiefly  occupied  of  late  in  rubbing  up  rny  Turkish  a 
little,  which  I  had  almost  forgotten  ;  there  was  a  time  when  I  wrote 


IN  EASTERN  EUROPE  269 

it  better  than  any  other  language.  It  is  coming  again  rapidly, 
and  I  make  no  doubt  that  in  a  little  time  I  should  speak  it  almost 
as  well  as  Spanish,  for  I  understand  the  groundwork.  In  Hungary 
and  Germany  I  picked  up  some  curious  books,  which  will  help  to  pass 
the  time  at  home  when  I  have  nothing  better  to  do.  It  is  a  long  way 
from  here  to  Constantinople,  and  it  is  probable  that  I  shall  be  fifteen 
or  sixteen  days  on  the  journey,  as  I  do  not  intend  to  travel  very 
fast.  It  is  possible  that  I  shall  stay  a  day  or  two  at  Adrianople, 
which  is  half  way.  If  you  should  not  hear  from  me  for  some  time 
don't  be  alarmed,  as  it  is  possible  that  I  shall  have  no  opportunities 
of  writing  till  I  get  to  Constantinople.  Bucharest,  where  I  am 
now,  is  close  on  the  Turkish  frontier,  being  only  half  a  day's 
journey.  Since  I  have  been  here,  I  have  bought  a  Tartar  dress  and 
a  couple  of  Turkish  shirts,  I  have  done  so  in  order  not  to  be 
stared  at  as  I  pass  along.  It  is  very  beautiful  and  by  no  means 
dear.  Yesterday  I  wrote  to  M.  Since  I  have  been  here  I 
have  seen  some  English  newspapers,  and  see  that  chap  H.  has 
got  in  with  M.  Perhaps  his  recommendation  was  that  he  had  once 
insulted  us.  However,  God  only  knows.  I  think  I  had  never 
much  confidence  in  M.  I  can  read  countenances  as  you  know,  and 
have  always  believed  him  to  be  selfish  and  insincere.  I,  however, 
care  nothing  about  him,  and  will  not  allow,  D.V.,  any  conduct  of 
his  to  disturb  me.  I  shall  be  glad  to  get  home,  and  if  I  can  but 
settle  down  a  little,  I  feel  that  I  can  accomplish  something  great. 
I  hope  that  my  dear  mother  is  well,  and  that  you  are  all  well.  God 
bless  you.  It  is  something  to  think  that  since  I  have  been  away  I 
have  to  a  certain  extent  accomplished  what  I  went  about.  I  am 
stronger  and  better  and  hardier,  my  cough  has  left  me,  there  is 
only  occasionally  a  little  huskiness  in  the  throat.  I  have  also 
increased  my  stock  of  languages,  and  my  imagination  is  brightened. 
Bucharest  is  a  strange  place  with  much  grandeur  and  much  filth, 
Sincel  have  been  here  I  have  dined  almost  every  day  with  Mr.  C,  who 
wants  me  to  have  an  apartment  in  his  house.  I  thought  it,  how- 
ever, better  to  be  at  an  inn,  though  filthy,  I  have  also  dined  once 
at  the  Russian  Consul-Generars,  whom  I  knew  in  Russia,  Now 
God  bless  you  my  heart's  darling ;  kiss  also  Hen.,  write  to  my 
mother,  and  remember  me  to  all  friends.  G.  Borrow. 

The  best  letter  that  I  have  of  this  journey,  and  in- 


270    GEORGE, BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

deed  the  best  letter  of  Borrow's  that  I  have  read,  is  one 
from  Constantinople  to  his  wife— the  only  letter  by 
him  from  that  city  : 

To  Mrs.  George  Borrow,  Oulton,  Lowestoft 

Constantinople^  16th  September  1844. 
My  darling  Carreta, — I  am  about  to  leave  Constantinople 
and  to  return  home.  I  have  given  up  the  idea  of  going  to  Russia; 
I  find  that  if  I  go  to  Odessa  I  shall  have  to  remain  in  quarantine 
for  fourteen  days,  which  I  have  no  inclination  to  do ;  I  am,  more- 
over, anxious  to  get  home,  being  quite  tired  of  wandering,  and 
desirous  of  being  once  more  with  my  loved  ones.  This  is  a  most 
interesting  place,  but  unfortunately  it  is  extremely  dear.  The 
Turks  have  no  inns,  and  I  am  here  at  an  English  one,  at  which, 
though  everything  is  comfortable,  the  prices  are  very  high. 
To-day  is  Monday,  and  next  Friday  I  purpose  starting  for 
Salonica  in  a  steamboat — Salonica  is  in  Albania.  I  shall  then 
cross  Albania,  a  journey  of  about  three  hundred  miles,  and  get  to 
Corfu,  from  which  I  can  either  get  to  England  across  Italy  and 
down  the  Rhine,  or  by  way  of  Marseilles  and  across  France.  I 
shall  not  make  any  stay  in  Italy  if  I  go  there,  as  I  have  nothing 
to  see  there.  I  shall  be  so  glad  to  be  at  home  with  you  once 
again,  and  to  see  my  dear  mother  and  Hen.  Tell  Hen.  that  I 
picked  up  for  her  in  one  of  the  bazaars  a  curious  Armenian  coin ; 
it  is  silver,  small,  but  thick,  with  a  most  curious  inscription  upon 
it.  I  gave  fifteen  piastres  for  it.  I  hope  it  and  the  rest  will  get 
safe  to  England.  I  have  bought  a  chest,  which  I  intend  to  send 
by  sea,  and  I  have  picked  up  a  great  many  books  and  other 
things,  and  I  wish  to  travel  light ;  I  shall,  therefore,  only  take  a 
bag  with  a  few  clothes  and  shirts.  It  is  possible  that  I  shall  be  at 
home  soon  after  your  receiving  this,  or  at  most  three  weeks  after. 
I  hope  to  write  to  you  again  from  Corfu,  which  is  a  British 
island  with  a  British  garrison  in  it,  like  Gibraltar ;  the  English 
newspapers  came  last  week.  I  see  those  wretched  French  cannot 
let  us  alone,  they  want  to  go  to  war ;  v?ell,  let  them  ;  they  richly 
deserve  a  good  drubbing.  The  people  here  are  very  kind  in  their 
way,  but  home  is  home,  especially  such  a  one  as  mine,  with  true 


IN  EASTERN  EUROPE  271 

hearts  to  welcome  me.  Oh,  I  was  so  glad  to  get  your  letters  ;  they 
were  rather  of  a  distant  date,  it  is  true,  but  they  quite  revived 
me.  I  hope  you  are  all  well,  and  my  dear  mother.  Since  I  have 
been  here  I  have  written  to  Mr.  Lord.  I  was  glad  to  hear  that  he 
has  written  to  Hen.  I  hope  Lucy  is  well ;  pray  remember  me  most 
kindly  to  her,  and  tell  her  that  I  hope  to  see  her  soon.  I  count 
so  of  getting  into  my  summer-house  again,  and  sitting  down  to 
write ;  I  have  arranged  my  book  in  my  mind,  and  though  it  will 
take  me  a  g-reat  deal  of  trouble  to  write  it,  I  feel  that  when  it  is 
written  it  will  be  first-rate.  My  journey,  with  God's  help,  has  done 
me  a  great  deal  of  good.  I  am  stronger  than  I  was,  and  I  can  now 
sleep.  I  intend  to  draw  on  England  for  forty  or  fifty  pounds ;  if 
I  don't  want  the  whole  of  it,  it  will  be  all  the  same.  I  have  still 
some  money  left,  but  I  have  no  wish  to  be  stopped  on  my  journey 
for  want  of  it.  I  am  sorry  about  what  you  told  me  respecting  the 
railway,  sorry  that  the  old  coach  is  driven  off  the  road.  I  shall 
patronise  it  as  little  as  possible,  but  stick  to  the  old  route  and 
Thurton  George.  What  a  number  of  poor  people  will  these 
railroads  deprive  of  their  bread.  I  am  grieved  at  what  you  say 
about  poor  M. ;  he  can  take  her  into  custody,  however,  and  oblige 
her  to  support  the  children  ;  such  is  law,  though  the  property  may 
have  been  secured  to  her,  she  can  be  compelled  to  do  that.  Tell 
Hen.  that  there  is  a  mosque  here,  called  the  mosque  of  Sultan 
Bajazet ;  it  is  full  of  sacred  pigeons ;  there  is  a  corner  of  the 
court  to  which  the  creatures  flock  to  be  fed,  like  bees,  by  hundreds 
and  thousands  ;  they  are  not  at  all  afraid,  as  they  are  never  killed. 
Every  place  where  they  can  roost  is  covered  with  them,  their 
impudence  is  great;  they  sprang  originally  from  two  pigeons 
brought  from  Asia  by  the  Emperor  of  Constantinople.  They  are 
of  a  deep  blue.     God  bless  you,  dearest.  G.  B. 

He  returned  home  by  way  of  Venice  and  Rome  as 
the  following  two  letters  indicate  ; 


To  Mrs.  George  Borrow,  Oulton,  Lowestoft 

Venice,  22nd  Octr.  1844. 
My   dearest   Carreta, — I   arrived  this  day  at  Venice,  and 


272    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

though  I  am  exceedingly  tired  I  hasten  to  write  a  line  to  inform 
you  of  my  well-being,  I  am  now  making  for  home  as  fast  as 
possible,  and  I  have  now  nothing  to  detain  me.  Since  I  wrote  to 
you  last  I  have  been  again  in  quarantine  for  two  days  and  a  half 
at  Trieste,  but  I  am  glad  to  say  that  I  shall  no  longer  be  detained 
on  that  account.  I  was  obliged  to  go  to  Trieste,  though  it  was 
much  out  of  my  way,  otherwise  I  must  have  remained  I  know  not 
how  long  in  Corfu,  waiting  for  a  direct  conveyance.  After  my 
liberation  I  only  stopped  a  day  at  Corfu  in  order  that  I  might 
lose  no  more  time,  though  I  really  wished  to  tarry  there  a  little 
longer,  the  people  were  so  kind.  On  the  day  of  my  liberation,  I 
had  four  invitations  to  dinner  from  the  officers.  I,  however,  made 
the  most  of  my  time,  and  escorted  by  one  Captain  Northcott,  of 
the  Rifles,  went  over  the  fortifications,  which  are  most  magni- 
ficent. I  saw  everything  that  I  well  could,  and  shall  never  forget 
the  kindness  with  which  I  was  treated.  The  next  day  I  went  to 
Trieste  in  a  steamer,  down  the  whole  length  of  the  Adriatic.  I 
was  horribly  unwell,  for  the  Adriatic  is  a  bad  sea,  and  very 
dangerous ;  the  weather  was  also  very  rough  ;  after  stopping  at 
Trieste  a  day,  besides  the  quarantine,  I  left  for  Venice,  and  here  I 
am,  and  hope  to  be  on  my  route  again  the  day  after  to-morrow. 
I  shall  now  hurry  through  Italy  by  way  of  Ancona,  Rome,  and 
Civita  Vecchia  to  Marseilles  in  France  and  from  Marseilles  to 
London,  in  not  more  than  six  days'  journey.  Oh,  I  shall  be  so 
glad  to  get  back  to  you  and  my  mother  (I  hope  she  is  alive  and 
well)  and  Hen.  I  am  glad  to  hear  that  we  are  not  to  have  a  war 
with  those  silly  people,  the  French.  The  idea  made  me  very 
uneasy,  for  I  thought  how  near  Oulton  lay  to  the  coast.  You 
cannot  imagine  what  a  magnificent  old  town  Venice  is ;  it  is 
clearly  the  finest  in  Italy,  although  in  decay  ;  it  stands  upon 
islands  in  the  sea,  and  in  many  places  is  intersected  with  canals. 
The  Grand  Canal  is  four  miles  long,  lined  with  palaces  on  either 
side.  I,  however,  shall  be  glad  to  leave  it,  for  there  is  no  place  to 
me  like  Oulton,  where  live  two  of  my  dear  ones.  I  have  told  you 
that  I  am  very  tired,  so  that  I  cannot  write  much  more,  and  I  am 
presently  going  to  bed,  but  I  am  sure  that  you  will  be  glad  to 
hear  from  me,  however  little  I  may  write.  I  think  I  told  you  in 
my  last  letter  that  I  had  been  to  the  top  of  Mount  Olympus  in 
Thessaly.     Tell  Hen.  that  I  saw  a  whole  herd  of  wild  deer  bound- 


IN  EASTERN  EUROPE  273 

ing  down  the  cliffs,  the  noise  they  made  was  like  thunder ;  I  also 
saw  an  enormous  eagle — one  of  Jupiter's  birds,  his  real  eagles, 
for,  according  to  the  Grecian  mythology,  Olympus  was  his 
favourite  haunt.  I  don't  know  what  it  was  then,  but  at  present 
the  most  wild  savage  place  I  ever  saw ;  an  immense  way  up  I  came 
to  a  forest  of  pines ;  half  of  them  were  broken  by  thunderbolts, 
snapped  in  the  middle,  and  the  ruins  lying  around  in  the  most 
hideous  confusion ;  some  had  been  blasted  from  top  to  bottom 
and  stood  naked,  black,  and  charred,  in  indescribable  horridness  ; 
Jupiter  was  the  god  of  thunder,  and  he  still  seems  to  haunt 
Olympus,  The  worst  is  there  is  little  water,  so  that  a  person 
might  almost  perish  there  of  thirst ;  the  snow-water,  however, 
when  it  runs  into  the  hollows  is  the  most  delicious  beverage  ever 
tasted — the  snow,  however,  is  very  high  up.  My  next  letter,  I 
hope,  will  be  from  Marseilles,  and  I  hope  to  be  there  in  a  very  few 
days.  Now,  God  bless  you,  my  dearest;  write  to  my  mother,  and 
kiss  Hen.,  and  remember  me  kindly  to  Lucy  and  the  Atkinses. 

G.  B. 


To  Mrs.  George  Borrow,  Oulton,  Lowestoft 

Rome,  1  Nov.  1844. 
My  dearest  Carreta, — My  last  letter  was  from  Ancona ;  the 
present  is,  as  you  see,  from  Rome.  From  Ancona  I  likewise  wrote 
to  Woodfall  requesting  he  would  send  a  letter  of  credit  for  twelve 
or  fifteen  pounds,  directing  to  the  care  of  the  British  Consul  at 
Marseilles.  I  hope  you  received  your  letter  and  that  he  received 
his,  as  by  the  time  I  get  to  Marseilles  I  shall  be  in  want  of  money 
by  reason  of  the  roundabout  way  I  have  been  obliged  to  come. 
I  am  quite  well,  thank  God,  and  hope  to  leave  here  in  a  day  or 
two.  It  is  close  by  the  sea,  and  France  is  close  by,  but  I  am 
afraid  I  shall  be  obliged  to  wait  some  days  at  Marseilles  before  I 
shall  get  the  letter,  as  the  post  goes  direct  from  no  part  of  Italy, 
though  it  is  not  more  than  six  days' journey,  or  seven  at  most, 
from  Ancona  to  London.  It  was  that  wretched  quarantine  at 
Corfu  that  has  been  the  cause  of  all  this  delay,  as  it  caused  me  to 
lose  the  passage  by  the  steamer  [original  torn  here]  Ancona,  which 
forced  me  to  go  round  by  Trieste  and  Venice,  five  hundred  miles 

s 


274    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

out  of  my  way,  at  a  considerable  expense.  Oh,  I  shall  be  so  glad 
to  get  home.  As  I  told  you  before,  I  am  quite  well ;  indeed,  in 
better  health  than  I  have  been  for  years,  but  it  is  very  vexatious 
to  be  stopped  in  the  manner  I  have  been.  God  bless  you,  my 
darling.     Write  to  my  mother  and  kiss  her,  G.  Borrow. 


CHAPTER    XXV 


LAFENGRO 


The  Bible  in  Spain  bears  on  its  title-page  the  date  1843, 
although  my  copy  makes  it  clear  in  Borrow's  hand- 
writing that  it  was  really  ready  for  publication  in  the 
previous  year. 


t 


1^  (>tf^  \\\l 


Borrow's  handwriting  had  changed  its  character  some- 
what when  he  inscribed  to  his  wife  a  copy  of  his  next 
book  Laveng7^o  in  1851. 


In  the  intervening  eight  or  nine  years  he  had  travelled 

376 


276    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

much — suffered  much.  During  all  these  years  he  had 
been  thinking  about,  talking  about,  his  next  book, 
making  no  secret  of  the  fact  that  it  was  to  be  an  Auto- 
biography. Even  before  The  Bible  in  Spain  was  issued 
he  had  written  to  Mr.  John  INIurray  foreshadowing  a 
book  in  which  his  father,  William  Taylor,  and  others 
were  to  put  in  an  appearance.  In  the  '  Advertisement ' 
to  The  Romany  Rye  he  tells  us  that  *  the  principal  part 
of  Lavengro  was  written  in  the  year  '43,  that  the  whole 
of  it  was  completed  before  the  termination  of  the  year 
'46,  and  that  it  was  in  the  hands  of  the  publisher  in  the 
year  '48.'  As  the  idea  grew  in  his  mind,  his  friend, 
Richard  Ford,  gave  him  much  sound  advice : 

Never  mind  nimminy-pimminy  people  thinking  subjects  low. 
Things  are  low  in  manner  of  handling.  Draw  Nature  in  rags  and 
poverty,  yet  draw  her  truly,  and  how  picturesque !  I  hate  your 
silver  fork,  kid  glove,  curly-haired  school.^ 

And  so  in  the  following  years,  now  to  Ford,  now  to 
Murray,  he  traces  his  progress,  while  in  1844  he  tells 
Dawson  Turner  that  he  is  '  at  present  engaged  in  a  kind 
of  Biography  in  the  Robinson  Crusoe  style.' ^  But  in 
the  same  year  he  went  to  Buda-Pesth,  Venice,  and 
Constantinople.  The  first  advertisement  of  the  book 
appeared  in  The  Qiiay^terly  Review  in  July  1848,  when 
Lavengro,  An  Autobiography,  was  announced.  Later 
in  the  same  year  Mr.  Murray  advertised  the  book  as 
Life,  A  Drama ;  and  Dr.  Knapp,  who  had  in  his 
collection  the  original  proof-sheets  of  Lavengro,  repro- 
duces the  title-page  of  the  book  which  then  stood  as 
Life,  A  Drama,  and  bore  the  date  1849.  Borrow's 
procrastination  in  delivering  the  complete  book  worried 
John   Murray  exceedingly.     Not  unnaturally,  for  in 

*  Knapp's  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  9.  *  Ibid.  p.  11. 


*  LAVENGRO '  277 

1848  he  had  offered  the  book  at  his  annual  sale  dinner 
to  the  booksellers  who  had  subscribed  to  it  liberally. 
Eighteen  months  later  Murray  was  still  worrying 
Borrow  for  the  return  of  the  proof-sheets  of  the  third 
and  last  volume.  Not  until  January  1850  do  we  hear 
of  it  as  Lavengro,  An  Autobiography,  and  under  this 
title  it  was  advertised  in  The  Quarterly  Review  for  that 
month  as  '  nearly  ready  for  publication.'  In  April  1850 
we  find  Woodfall,  .John  Murray's  printer,  writing  letter 
after  letter  urging  celerity,  to  which  Mrs.  Borrow 
replies,  excusing  the  delay  on  account  of  her  husband's 
indifferent  health.  They  have  been  together  in  lodg- 
ings at  Yarmouth.  '  He  had  many  plunges  into  the 
briny  Ocean,  which  seemed  to  do  him  good.'^  Murray 
continued  to  exhort,  but  the  final  chapter  did  not  reach 
him.  'My  sale  is  fixed  for  December  12th,'  he  writes 
in  November,  '  and  if  I  cannot  show  the  book  then  I 
must  throw  it  up.'  This  threat  had  little  effect,  for  on 
13th  December  we  find  Murray  still  coaxing  his 
dilatory  author,  telling  him  with  justice  that  there 
were  passages  in  his  book  'equal  to  Defoe.'  The  very 
printer,  Mr.  Woodfall,  joined  in  the  chase.  '  The 
public  is  quite  prepared  to  devour  your  book,'  he 
wrote,  which  was  unhappily  not  the  case.  Nor  was 
Ford  a  happier  prophet,  although  a  true  friend  when  he 
wrote — '  I  am  sure  it  will  be  the  book  of  the  year  when 
it  is  brought  forth.' ^  The  activity  of  Mrs.  Borrow  in 
this  matter  of  the  publication  of  Lavengro  is  interest- 
ing. '  My  husband  ...  is,  I  assure  you,  doing  all  he 
can  as  regards  the  completion  of  the  book,'  she  writes 

*  Knapp's  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  19. 

2  Ford  was  right,  however,  if  authors  wrote  only  for  posterity,  although 
1851  was  not  a  very  important  year  among  the  great  Victorian  writers.  It 
produced  Carlyle's  John  Sterling,  Ruskin's  Stones  of  Venice,  and  Kingsley's 
Yeast. 


278    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

to  Mr.  Murray  in  December  1849,  and  in  November  of 
the  following  year  Murray  writes  to  her  to  say  that 
he  is  engraving  Phillips's  portrait  of  Borrow  for  the 
book.  '  I  think  a  cheering  letter  from  you  will  do  Mr. 
Borrow  good,'  she  writes  later.  Throughout  the  whole 
correspondence  between  publisher  and  printer  we 
are  impressed  by  Mrs.  Borrow's  keen  interest  in 
her  husband's  book,  her  anxiety  that  he  should  be 
humoured.  Sadly  did  Borrow  need  to  be  humoured, 
for  if  he  had  cherished  the  illusion  that  his  book  would 
really  be  the  '  Book  of  the  Year '  he  was  to  suffer  a 
cruel  disillusion.  Scarcely  any  one  wanted  it.  All  the 
critics  abused  it.  In  I'he  AthencBum  it  was  bluntly 
pronounced  a  failure.  '  The  story  of  Lavengro  will 
content  no  one,'  said  Sir  William  Stirling-Maxwell  in 
Frase?^'s  Magazme.  The  book  '  will  add  but  little  to 
Mr.  Borrow's  reputation,'  said  Blackwood.  The  only 
real  insight  into  the  book's  significance  was  provided 
by  Thomas  Gordon  Hake  in  a  letter  to  The  New 
Monthly  Review,  in  which  journal  the  editor,  Harrison 
Ainsworth,  had  already  pronounced  a  not  very  favour- 
able opinion.  '  Lavengro's  roots  will  strike  deep  into 
the  soil  of  English  letters,'  wrote  Dr.  Hake,  and  he 
then  pronounced  a  verdict  now  universally  accepted. 
George  Henry  Lewes  once  happily  remarked  that  he 
would  make  an  appreciation  of  Boswell's  Life  of 
Johnson  a  test  of  friendship.  Many  of  us  would  be 
almost  equally  inclined  to  make  such  a  test  of  Borrow^'s 
Lavengro.  Tennyson  declared  that  an  enthusiasm  for 
Milton's  Lycidas  was  a  touchstone  of  taste  in  poetry. 
May  we  not  say  that  an  enthusiasm  for  Borrow's 
Lavengro  is  now  a  touchstone  of  taste  in  English 
prose  literature  ? 

But  the  reception  of  Lavengro  by  the  critics,  and 


'  LAVENGRO  '  279 

also  by  the  public/  may  be  said  to  have  destroyed 
Borrow's  moral  fibre.  Henceforth,  it  was  a  soured  and 
disappointed  man  who  went  forth  to  meet  the  world. 
We  hear  much  in  the  gossip  of  contemporaries  of 
Borrow's  eccentricities,  it  may  be  of  his  rudeness  and 
grufFness,  in  the  last  years  of  his  life.  Only  those  who 
can  realise  the  personality  of  a  self-contained  man, 
conscious,  as  all  genius  has  ever  been,  of  its  achieve- 
ment, and  conscious  also  of  the  failure  of  the  world  to 
recognise,  will  understand — and  will  sympathise. 

Borrow,  as  we  have  seen,  took  many  years  to  write 
Lavengro.  '  I  am  writing  the  work,'  he  told  Dawson 
Turner,  '  in  precisely  the  same  manner  as  The  Bible 
in  Spain,  viz.,  on  blank  sheets  of  old  account-books, 
backs  of  letters,'  etc.,  and  he  recalls  Mahomet  writing 
the  Koran  on  mutton  bones  as  an  analogy  to  his  own 
'slovenliness  of  manuscript.'"  I  have  had  plenty  of 
opportunity  of  testing  this  slovenliness  in  the  collection 
of  manuscripts  of  portions  of  Lavengro  that  have  come 
into  my  possession.  These  are  written  upon  pieces  of 
paper  of  all  shapes  and  sizes,  although  at  least  a  third  of 
the  book  in  Borrow's  very  neat  handwriting  is  contained 
in  a  leather  notebook,  of  which  I  give  examples  of  the 
title-page  and  opening  leaf  in  facsimile.  The  title-page 
demonstrates  the  earliest  form  of  Borrow's  conception. 
Not  only  did  he  then  contemplate  an  undisguised  auto- 
biography, but  even  described  himself,  as  he  frequently 
did  in  his  conversation,  as  '  a  Norfolk  man.'  Before 
the  book  was  finished,  however,  he  repudiated  the 
autobiographical  note,  and  by  the  time  he  sat  down  to 
write  The  Roinany  Rye  we  find  him  fiercely  denounc- 

'  Mr.  Murray  published  Lavengro  in  an  edition  of  8000  copies  in  1851^  a 
second  edition  (incorrectly  called  the  third)  was  not  asked  for  until  1872. 
2  Jenkins's  Life,  p.  387- 


280    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 


THE    ORIGINAL    TITLE-PAGE    OF    LAVENGRO. 
From  the  Manuscript  in  the  possession  of  the  Author  of  '  George  Borrow  and  his  Circle.' 


*  LAVENGRO  '  281 

ing  his  critics  for  coming  to  such  a  conclusion.  '  The 
writer,'  he  declares,  '  never  said  it  was  an  autobio- 
graphy ;  never  authorised  any  person  to  say  it  was 
one.'  Which  was  doubtless  true,  in  a  measure.  Yet 
I  find  among  my  Borrow  Papers  the  following  letter 
from  Whitwell  Elwin,  who,  writing  from  Booton 
Rectory  on  21st  October  1852,  and  addressing  him 
as  '  My  dear  Mr.  Borrow,'  said  : 

I  hoped  to  have  been  able  to  call  upon  you  at  Yarmouth,  but 
a  heavy  cold  first,  and  now  occupation,  have  interfered  with  my 
intentions.  I  daresay  you  have  seen  the  mention  made  of  your 
Lavengro  in  the  article  on  Haydon  in  the  current  number  of  The 
Quarterly  Review,  and  I  thought  you  might  like  to  know  that 
every  syllable,  both  comment  and  extract,  was  inserted  by  the 
writer  (a  man  little  given  to  praise)  of  his  own  accord.  Murray 
sent  him  your  book,  and  that  was  all.  No  addition  or  modifica- 
tion was  made  by  myself,  and  it  is  therefore  the  unbiassed  judg- 
ment of  a  very  critical  reviewer.  Whenever  you  appear  again 
before  the  public  I  shall  endeavour  to  do  ample  justice  to  your 
past  and  present  merits,  and  there  is  one  point  in  which  you  could 
aid  those  who  understand  you  and  your  books  in  bringing  over 
general  readers  to  your  side.  I  was  myself  acquainted  with  many 
of  the  persons  you  have  sketched  in  your  Lave7igro,  and  I  can 
testify  to  the  extraordinary  vividness  and  accuracy  of  the  portraits. 
What  I  have  seen,  again,  of  yourself  tells  me  that  romantic  adven- 
tures are  your  natural  element,  and  I  should  a  priori  expect  that 
much  of  your  history  would  be  stranger  than  fiction.  But  you 
must  remember  that  the  hulk  of  readers  have  no  personal  acquaint- 
ance with  you,  or  the  characters  you  describe.  The  consequence 
is  that  they  fancy  there  is  an  immensity  of  romance  mixed  up 
with  the  facts,  and  they  are  irritated  by  the  inability  to  distin- 
guish between  them.  I  am  confident,  from  all  I  have  heard,  that 
this  was  the  source  of  the  comparatively  cold  reception  of  Laven- 
gro. I  should  have  partaken  the  feeling  myself  if  I  had  not  had 
the  means  of  testing  the  fidelity  of  many  portions  of  the  book, 
from  which  I  inferred  the  equal  fidelity  of  the  rest.  I  think  you 
have  the  remedy  in  your  own  hands,  viz.,  by  giving  the  utmost  pos- 


282    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 


\\^U\r     |., 


'UkjA  w^ijii  WA  ilww 


wA,' 


\\i  \nm.wn.  M 


f^ 


^»IA1A     IWi 


tmi  (h/u   'lU 


i,  I  ^  {  ^^lAiKMVn  h  mil  Wfe  I 


iCi!  riH  ,  ^  ^n^^-  WiWl,   Hit 


FACSIMILE  OF  THE  FIRST  PAGE  OF  LAVENGRO. 

From  the  Manuscript  in  the  possession  of  the  Author  of '  George  Borrow  and  his  Circle.' 


'  LAVENGRO  '  283 

sible  matter-of-fact  air  to  your  sequel.  I  do  not  mean  that  you  are 
to  tame  down  the  truth,  but  some  ways  of  narrating  a  story  make 
it  seem  more  credible  than  others,  and  if  you  were  so  far  to  defer 
to  the  ignorance  of  the  public  they  would  enter  into  the  full 
spirit  of  your  rich  and  racy  narrative.  You  naturally  look  at 
your  life  from  your  own  point  of  view,  and  this  in  itself  is  the 
best ;  but  when  you  publish  a  book  you  invite  the  reader  to  par- 
ticipate in  the  events  of  your  career,  and  it  is  necessary  then  to 
look  a  little  at  things  from  Ms  point  of  view.  As  he  has  not 
your  knowledge  you  must  stoop  to  him.  I  throw  this  out  for  your 
consideration.  My  sole  wish  is  that  the  public  should  have  a 
right  estimate  of  you,  and  surely  you  ought  to  do  what  is  in  your 
power  to  help  them  to  it.  I  know  you  will  excuse  the  liberty  I 
take  in  oifering  this  crude  suggestion.  Take  it  for  what  it  is 
worth,  but  anyhow  .  .  . 

To  this  letter,  as  we  learn  from  Elwin's  Life,  '  in- 
stead of  roaring  like  a  lion,'  as  Elwin  had  expected,  he 
returned  quite  a  '  lamb-like  note.' 

Read  by  the  light  in  which  we  all  judge  the  book 
to-day,  this  estimate  by  Elwin  was  about  as  fatuous  as 
most  contemporary  criticisms  of  a  masterpiece.  Which 
is  only  to  say  that  it  is  rarely  given  to  contemporary 
critics  to  judge  accurately  of  the  great  work  that  comes 
to  them  amid  a  mass  that  is  not  great.  That  Elwin, 
although  not  a  good  editor  of  Pope,  was  a  sound  critic 
of  the  literature  of  a  period  anterior  to  his  own  is 
demonstrated  by  the  admirable  essays  from  his  pen  that 
have  been  reprinted  with  an  excellent  memoir  of  him 
by  his  son.^  In  this  memoir  we  have  a  capital  glimpse 
of  our  hero  : 

Among  the  notables  whom  he  had  met  was  Borrow,  whose 
Lavengro  and  Romany  Rye  he  afterwards  reviewed  in  1857  under 
the  title  of  'Roving   Life   in   England.'      Their   interview   was 

1  Some  XVIII.  Century  Men  of  Letters:  Biographical  Essays,  by  the  Rev. 
Whitwell  Elwin,  sometime  Editor  of  The  Quarterly  Review.  With  a  Memoir 
by  his  son  Warwick  Elwin^  2  vols.     John  Murray^  1902. 


284    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

characteristic  of  both.  Borrow  was  just  then  very  sore  with  his 
snarling  critics,  and  on  some  one  mentioning  that  Elwin  was  a 
quartering  reviewer,  he  said,  '  Sir,  I  wish  you  a  better  employ- 
ment."' Then  hastily  changing  the  subject  he  called  out,  '  What 
party  are  yoii  in  the  Church — Tractarian,  Moderate,  or  Evangeli- 
cal ?  I  am  happy  to  say  I  am  the  old  High.''  '  I  am  happy  to 
say  I  am  not,''  was  El  win's  emphatic  reply.  Borrow  boasted  of  his 
proficiency  in  the  Norfolk  dialect,  which  he  endeavoured  to  speak 
as  broadly  as  possible.  '  I  told  him,'  said  Elwin,  '  that  he  had 
not  cultivated  it  with  his  usual  success.'  As  the  conversation 
proceeded  it  became  less  disputatious,  and  the  two  ended  by  be- 
coming so  cordial  that  they  promised  to  visit  each  other.  Borrow 
fulfilled  his  promise  in  the  following  October,  when  he  went  to 
Booton,^  and  was  'full  of  anecdote  and  reminiscence,'  and  de- 
lighted the  rectory  children  by  singing  them  songs  in  the  gypsy 
tongue.  Elwin  during  this  visit  urged  him  to  try  his  hand  at 
an  article  for  the  Revieiv.  '  Never,'  he  said  ;  '  I  have  made  a 
resolution  never  to  have  anything  to  do  with  such  a  blackguard 
trade.' 

While  writing  of  Whitwell  Elwin  and  his  associa- 
tion with  Borrow,  which  was  sometimes  rather  strained 
as  we  shall  see  when  The  Romany  Rye  comes  to  be 
published,  it  is  interesting  to  turn  to  Elwin's  final  im- 
pression of  Borrow,  as  conveyed  in  a  letter  which  the 
recipient^  has  kindly  placed  at  my  disposal.  It  was 
written  from  Booton  Rectory,  and  is  dated  27th 
October  1893 : 

I    used   occasionally  to    meet    Borrow    at    the  house   of  Mr. 

1  Whitwell  Elwin  was  Rector  of  Booton,  Norfolk^a  family  living — from 
1849  to  his  deaths  aged  83,  on  1st  January  1900.  He  succeeded  Lockhart  as 
editor  of  The  Quarterly  Review  in  1853,  and  resigned  in  1860.  He  was  born 
in  181G,  and  educated  at  Caius  College,  Cambridge.  Thackeray  called  him 
'a  grandson  of  the  late  Rev.  Dr.  Primrose,' thereby  recognising  in  Elwin 
many  of  the  kindly  qualities  of  Goldsmith's  admirable  creation. 

2  Mr.  James  Hooper,  of  Norwich,  whose  kindness  in  placing  this  and 
many  other  documents  at  my  disposal  I  have  already  acknowledged.  This 
letter  was  first  published  in  The  Sphere,  December  19, 1903. 


'  LAVENGRO  '  285 

Murray,  his  publisher,  and  he  once  stayed  with  me  here  for  two 
or  three  days  about  1855.  He  always  seemed  to  me  quite  at  ease 
'among  refined  people,""  and  I  should  not  have  ascribed  his 
dogmatic  tone,  when  he  adopted  it,  to  his  resentment  at  finding 
himself  out  of  keeping  witii  his  society.  A  spirit  of  self- 
assertion  was  engrained  in  him,  and  it  was  supported  by  a 
combative  temperament.  As  he  was  proud  of  his  bodily 
prowess,  and  rather  given  to  parade  it,  so  he  took  the  same  view 
of  an  argument  as  of  a  battle  with  fists,  and  thought  that  manli- 
ness required  him  to  be  determined  and  unflinching.  But  this,  in 
my  experience  of  him,  was  not  his  ordinary  manner,  which  was 
calm  and  companionable,  without  rudeness  of  any  kind,  unless 
some  difference  occurred  to  provoke  his  pugnacity.  I  have  wit- 
nessed instances  of  his  care  to  avoid  wounding  feelings  needlessly. 
He  never  kept  back  his  opinions  which,  on  some  points,  were 
shallow  and  even  absurd  ;  and  when  his  antagonist  was  as  persis- 
tently positive  as  himself,  he  was  apt  to  be  over  vehement  in 
contradiction.  I  have  heard  Mr.  Murray  say  that  once  in  a  dispute 
with  Dr.  Whewell  at  a  dinner  the  language  on  both  sides  grew  so 
fiery  that  Mrs.  Whewell  fainted. 

He  told  me  that  his  composition  cost  him  a  vast  amount  of 
labour,  that  his  first  draughts  were  diffuse  and  crude,  and  that  he 
wrote  his  productions  several  times  before  he  had  condensed  and 
polished  them  to  his  mind.  There  is  nothing  choicer  in  the  Eng- 
lish language  than  some  of  his  narratives,  descriptions,  and 
sketches  of  character,  but  in  his  best  books  he  did  not  always 
prune  sufficiently,  and  in  his  last  work.  Wild  Wales,  he  seemed 
to  me  to  have  lost  the  faculty  altogether.  Mr.  Murray  long 
refused  to  publish  it  unless  it  was  curtailed,  and  Borrow,  with 
his  usual  self-will  and  self-confidence,  refused  to  retrench  the 
trivialities.  Either  he  got  his  own  way  in  the  end,  or  he  revised 
his  manuscript  to  little  purpose. 

Probably  most  of  what  there  was  to  tell  of  Boirow  has  been 
related  by  himself.  It  is  a  disadvantage  in  Lavengro  and  Romany 
Rye  that  we  cannot  with  certainty  separate  fact  from  fiction,  for 
he  avowed  in  talk  that,  like  Goethe,  he  had  assumed  the  right  in 
the  interests  of  his  autobiographical  narrative  to  embellish  it  in 
places ;  but  the  main  outline,  and  larger  part  of  the  details,  are 
the  genuine  record  of  what  he  had   seen  and  done,  and   I  can 


286    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

testify  that  some  of  his  minor  personages  who  were  known  to  me 
in  my  boyhood  are  described  with  perfect  accuracy. 

Two  letters  by  Mr.  Elwin  to  Borrow,  from  my 
Borrow  Papers,  both  dated  1853 — two  years  after 
Lavengi^o  was  written, — may  well  have  place  here : 


To  George  Borrow,  Esq. 

BooTON,  Norwich,  Oct.  26,  1853. 

My  dear  Mr.  Borrow, — I  shall  be  rejoiced  to  see  you  here, 
and  I  hope  you  will  fasten  a  little  luggage  to  the  bow  of  your 
saddle,  and  spend  as  much  time  under  my  roof  as  you  can  spare. 
I  am  always  at  home.  Mrs.  Elwin  is  sure  to  be  in  the  house  or 
garden,  and  I,  at  the  worst,  not  further  off  than  the  extreme 
boundary  of  my  parish.  Pray  come,  and  that  quickly.  Your 
shortest  road  from  Norwich  is  through  Horsford,  and  from  thence 
to  the  park  wall  of  Haverland  Hall,  which  you  skirt.  This  will 
bring  you  out  by  a  small  w^ayside  public  house,  well  known  in  these 
parts,  called  '  The  Rat-catchers.'  At  this  point  you  turn  sharp  to 
the  left,  and  keep  the  straight  road  till  you  come  to  a  church  with 
a  new  red  brick  house  adjoining,  which  is  your  journey's  end. 

The  conclusion  of  your  note  to  me  is  so  true  in  sentiment, 
and  so  admirable  in  expression,  that  I  hope  you  will  introduce  it 
into  your  next  work.  I  wish  it  had  been  said  in  the  article  on 
Haydon.  Cannot  you  strew  such  criticisms  through  the  sequel  to 
Lavengro  ?  They  would  give  additional  charm  and  value  to  the 
work.     Believe  me,  very  truly  yours,  W.  Elwin. 

You  are  of  course  aware  that  if  /  had  spoken  of  Lavengro 
in  the  Q.  R.  I  should  have  said  much  more,  but  as  I  hoped 
for  my  turn  hereafter,  I  preferred  to  let  the  passage  go  forth 
unadulterated. 


To  George  Borrow,  Esq. 

BooTON  Rectory,  Norwich,  Nov.  6,  1853. 
My  dear  Mr.  Borrow, — You  bore  your  mishap  with  a  phil- 


*  LAVENGRO  '  287 

osopliic  patience,  and  started  with  an  energy  which  gives  the  best 
earnest  that  you  would  arrive  safe  and  sound  at  Norwich.  I  was 
happy  to  find  yesterday  morning,  by  the  arrival  of  your  kind 
present,  a  sure  notification  that  you  were  well  home.  Many 
thanks  for  the  tea,  which  we  drink  with  great  zest  and  diligence. 
My  legs  are  not  as  long  as  yours,  nor  my  breath  either.  You 
soon  made  me  feel  that  I  must  either  turn  back  or  be  left  behind, 
so  I  chose  the  former.  Mrs.  Elwin  and  my  children  desire  their 
kind  regards.  They  one  and  all  enjoyed  your  visit.  Believe  me, 
very  truly  yours,  W.  Elwin. 

I  have  said  that  I  possess  large  portions  of  iMvengro 
in  manuscript.  Borrow's  always  helpful  wife,  however, 
copied  out  the  whole  manuscript  for  the  publishers, 
and  this  '  clean  copy '  came  to  Dr.  Knapp,  who  found 
even  here  a  few  pages  of  very  valuable  writing  de- 
leted, and  these  he  has  very  rightly  restored  in  Mr. 
Murray's  edition  of  Lavengro.  Why  Borrow  took 
so  much  pains  to  explain  that  his  wife  had  copied 
Lavengro,  as  the  following  document  implies,  I  can- 
not think.  I  find  in  his  handwriting  this  scrap  of 
paper  signed  by  Mary  Borrow,  and  witnessed  by  her 
daughter : 

Janry.  30,  1869. 

This  is  to  certify  that  I  transcribed  The  Bible  in  Spain, 
Lavengro,  and  some  other  works  of  my  husband  George  Borrow, 
from  the  original  manuscripts.  A  considerable  portion  of  the 
transcript  of  Lavengro  was  lost  at  the  printing-office  where  the 
work  was  printed.  Mary  Borrow. 

Witness  :  Henrietta  M.,  daughter  of  Mary  Borrow. 

It  only  remains  here  to  state  the  melancholy  fact 
once  again  that  Lavengro,  great  work  of  literature 
as  it  is  now  universally  acknowledged  to  be,  was  not 
'  the  book  of  the  year.'     The  three  thousand  copies  of 


288    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

the  first  issue  took  more  than  twenty  years  to  sell,  and 
it  was  not  until  1872  that  Mr.  Murray  resolved  to  issue 
a  cheaper  edition.  The  time  was  not  ripe  for  the  cult 
of  the  open  road ;  the  zest  for  '  the  wind  on  the  heath  ' 
that  our  age  shares  so  keenly. 


CHAPTER    XXVI 

A  VISIT  TO  CORNISH  KINSMEN 

If  Borrow  had  been  a  normal  man  of  letters  he  would 
have  been  quite  satisfied  to  settle  down  at  Oulton,  in  a 
comfortable  home,  with  a  devoted  wife.  The  question 
of  money  was  no  longer  to  worry  him.  He  had  more- 
over a  money-making  gift,  which  made  him  inde- 
pendent in  a  measure  of  his  wife's  fortune.  From  The 
Bible  in  Spain  he  must  have  drawn  a  very  considerable 
amount,  considerable,  that  is,  for  a  man  whose  habits 
were  always  somewhat  penurious.  The  Bible  in  Spain 
would  have  been  followed  up,  were  Borrow  a  quite 
other  kind  of  man,  by  a  succession  of  books  almost 
equally  remunerative.  Even  for  one  so  prone  to  hate 
both  books  and  bookmen  there  was  always  the  wind  on 
the  heath,  the  gypsy  encampment,  the  now  famous 
'broad,'  not  then  the  haunt  of  innumerable  trippers. 
But  Borrow  ever  loved  wandering  more  than  writing. 
Almost  immediately  after  his  marriage — in  1840 — he 
hinted  to  the  Bible  Society  of  a  journey  to  China  ;  a 
year  later,  in  June  1841,  he  suggested  to  Lord  Clar- 
endon that  Lord  Palmerston  might  give  him  a  consul- 
ship :  he  consulted  Hasfeld  as  to  a  possible  livelihood 
in  Berlin,  and  Ford  as  to  travel  in  Africa.  He  seems 
to  have  endured  residence  at  Oulton  with  difficulty 
during  the  succeeding  three  years,  and  in  1844  we  find 


290    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

him  engaged  upon  the  continental  travel  that  we  have 
already  recorded.  In  1847  he  had  hopes  of  the  consul- 
ship at  Canton,  but  Bowring  wanted  it  for  himself, 
and  a  misunderstanding  over  this  led  to  an  inevitable 
break  of  old  friendship.  Borrow's  passionate  love  of 
travel  was  never  more  to  be  gratified  at  the  expense  of 
others.  He  tried  hard,  indeed,  to  secure  a  journey  to 
the  East  from  the  British  Museum  Trustees,  and  then 
gave  up  the  struggle.  Further  wanderings,  which  were 
many,  were  to  be  confined  to  Europe  and  indeed  to 
England,  Scotland,  Ireland,  and  the  Isle  of  Man.  His 
first  journey,  however,  was  not  at  his  own  initiative. 
Mrs.  Borrow's  health  was  unequal  to  the  severe  winters 
at  Oulton,  and  so  the  Borrows  made  their  home  at  Yar- 
mouth from  1853  to  1860.  During  these  years  he  gave 
his  vagabond  propensities  full  play.  No  year  passed 
without  its  record  of  wandering.  His  first  expedition 
was  the  outcome  of  a  burst  of  notoriety  that  seems  to 
have  done  for  Borrow  what  the  success  of  his  Bible  in 
Spain  could  not  do — revealed  his  identity  to  his  Cornish 
relations.  The  Bury  Post  of  17th  September  1853 
recorded  that  Borrow  had  at  the  risk  of  his  life  saved 
at  least  one  member  of  a  boat's  crew  wrecked  on  the 
coast  at  Yarmouth : 

The  moment  was  an  awful  one,  when  George  Borrow,  the  well- 
known  author  of  Lavengro  and  The  Bible  in  Spain,  dashed  into 
the  surf  and  saved  one  life,  and  through  his  instrumentality  the 
others  were  saved.  We  ourselves  have  known  this  brave  and 
gifted  man  for  years,  and,  daring  as  was  his  deed,  we  have  known 
him  more  than  once  to  risk  his  life  for  others.  We  are  happy  to 
add  that  he  has  sustained  no  material  injury. 

I  was  quite  sorry  to  find  this  extract  from  the  Bury 
Post   among  my    Borrow    Papers    in   Mrs.    Borrow's 


A  VISIT  TO  CORNISH  KINSMEN       291 

handwriting.  It  a  little  suggests  that  she  sent  the 
copy  to  the  journal  in  question,  or  at  least  inspired  the 
paragraph,  perhaps  in  a  letter  to  her  friend,  Dr.  Gordon 
Hake,  who  with  his  family  then  resided  at  Bury  St. 
Edmunds.  Borrow  was  a  perfect  swimmer,  and  there 
is  no  reason  to  suppose  but  that  he  did  act  heroically.^ 
In  my  Borrow  Papers  I  find  in  his  handAvriting  his  OAvn 
account  of  the  adventure  : 

I  was  seated  on  Yarmouth  jetty  ;  the  weather  was  very 
stormy  ;  there  came  a  tremendous  sea,  which  struck  the  jetty, 
and  made  it  quiver  ;  there  was  a  boat  on  the  lee-side  of  the  jetty 
fastened  by  a  painter  ;  the  surge  snapped  the  painter  like  a  thread, 
the  boat  was  overset  with  two  men  in  it,  there  was  a  cry,  '  The  men 
must  be  drowned.'  I  started  up  from  my  seat  on  the  north  side 
of  the  jetty,  and  saw  the  boat  bottom  upwards,  and  I  heard  some 
people  say,  '  The  men  are  under  it.'  I  ran  a  little  way  along  the 
jetty,  and  then  jumped  upon  the  sand  ;  before  taking  the  leap  I 
saw  a  man  flung  by  the  surge  upon  the  shore  ;  he  crawled  up  upon 
the  beach,  and  was,  I  believe,  lifted  up  upon  his  legs  by  certain 
beachmen.  I  had  my  eye  upon  the  boat,  which  was  now  near  the 
shore ;  I  had  an  idea  that  there  was  a  man  under  it ;  I  flung  off 
my  coat  and  hat,  and  went  a  little  way  into  the  sea,  about  parallel 
to  some  beachmen  who  were  moving  backwards  and  forwards  as 
the  waves  advanced  and  receded.  I  now  saw  a  man  as  a  wave 
recoiled  lying  close  by  the  boat  in  the  reflux.  I  dashed  forward 
and  made  a  grip  at  the  man,  then  came  a  tremendous  wave  which 
tumbled  me  heels  over  head ;  being  an  expert  diver  I  did  not 
attempt  to  rise,  lest  I  should  be  flung  on  shore.     When  the  wave 


*  It  is  thus  that  an  old  schoolfellow,  Dalrymple,  describes  the  episode  in  a 
fragment  of  manuscript  in  the  possession  of  Mrs.  James  Stuart  of  Carrow 
Abbey,  from  which  I  have  already  quoted  : 

'In  1850/2/3  Borrow  lived  at  Yarmouth;  he  here  made  rather  a 
ludicrous  exhibition  of  himself  on  the  occasion  of  a  wreck,  when  he  ran  into 
the  sea  through  a  full  tide  up  to  his  knees,  with  the  utmost  apparent  heroism, 
and  retreated  again  as  soon  as  he  thought  it  might  be  dangerous.  He 
incurred  so  much  ridicule  that  he  abruptly  quitted  the  town,  and  I  have  not 
heard  since  of  him.' 


292    GEORGE  BOKROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

receded,  I  found  myself  near  the  boat ;  the  man  was  now  nearer  to 
the  shore  than  myself.  I  believe  a  man  or  two  were  making 
towards  him ;  another  wave  came  which  overwhelmed  me,  and 
flung  me  on  the  shore,  to  which  I  was  now  making  with  all  my 
strength.  I  got  on  my  legs  for  one  moment,  when  the  advanced 
guard,  if  I  may  call  it  so,  of  another  Avave,  struck  me  on  the  back, 
and  laid  me  upon  my  face,  but  I  was  now  quite  out  of  danger.  A 
man  now  came  and  lifted  me  up,  as  others  lifted  up  the  other  man, 
who  seemed  quite  unable  to  exert  himself.  The  above  is  a  plain 
statement  of  facts.  I  was  the  only  person,  with  the  exception  of  the 
man  in  distress,  who  was  in  the  deep  water,  or  who  confronted  the 
billows,  which  were  indeed  monstrous,  but  which  I  cared  little  for, 
being,  as  I  said  before,  an  expert  diver.  Had  I  been  alone  the 
result  of  the  affair  would  have  been  much  the  same ;  as  it  is,  after 
the  last  wave  I  could  easily  have  dragged  the  man  up  upon  the 
beach.  I  am  willing  to  give  to  the  beachmen  whatever  credit  is 
due  to  them  ;  I  am  anxious  to  believe  that  one  of  them  was  once 
up  to  his  middle  in  water,  but  truth  compels  me  to  state  that  I 
never  saw  one  of  them  up  to  his  knees.  I  received  very  uncivil 
language  from  one  of  them,  but  every  species  of  respect  and  sym- 
pathy from  the  genteel  part  of  the  spectators.  A  gentleman,  I 
believe  from  Norwich,  and  a  policeman,  attended  me  in  a  cab  to 
my  lodgings,  where  they  undressed  and  dressed  me.  The  kindness 
of  these  two  individuals  I  shall  never  forget. 

In  any  case  this  adventure  had  exceptional  publicity. 
For  example  Mr.  Robert  Cooke  of  John  Murray's  firm 
wrote  to  Mrs.  Borrow  on  13th  October  1853  to  say  that 
while  travelling  abroad  he  had  read  in  Galignams 
Messengei^  an  account  of  his  friend  Lavengro's  '  daring 
and  heroic  act  in  rescuing  so  many  from  a  watery 
grave.'  '  I  wish  they  had  all  been  critics,'  he  adds  ;  '  he 
would  have  done  just  the  same,  and  they  might  perhaps 
have  shown  their  gratitude  when  they  got  among  his 
inky  waves  of  literature.' 

More  than  this,  the  paragraph  in  the  Bury  St. 
Edmunds   newspaper   was   copied   into  the  Plymouth 


A  VISIT  TO  CORNISH  KINSMEN       293 

Mail,  and  was  there  read  by  the  Borrows  of  Cornwall, 
who  had  heard  nothmg  of  their  relative,  Thomas 
Borrow,  the  army  captain  and  his  family,  for  fifty  years 
or  more.  One  of  Borrow's  cousins  by  marriage, 
Robert  Taylor  of  Penquite,  invited  him  to  his  father's 
homeland,  and  Borrow  accepted,  glad,  we  may  be  sure, 
of  any  excuse  for  a  renewal  of  his  wanderings.  And 
so  on  the  23rd  of  December  1853  Borrow  made  his 
way  from  Yarmouth  to  Plymouth  by  rail,  and  thence 
walked  twenty  miles  to  Liskeard,  where  quite  a  little 
party  of  Borrow's  cousins  were  present  to  greet  him. 
The  Borrow  family  consisted  of  Henry  Borrow  of 
Looe  Doun,  the  father  of  Mrs.  Taylor,  Wilham 
Borrow  of  Trethinnick,  Thomas  Nicholas  and  Eliza- 
beth Borrow,  all  first  cousins,  except  Anne  Taylor. 
Anne,  talking  to  a  friend,  describes  Borrow  on  this  visit 
better  than  any  one  else  has  done : 

A  fine  tall  man  of  about  six  feet  three;  well-proportioned  and 
not  stout ;  able  to  walk  five  miles  an  hour  successively ;  rather 
florid  face  without  any  hirsute  appendages ;  hair  white  and  soft ; 
eyes  and  eyebrows  dark ;  good  nose  and  very  nice  mouth  ;  well- 
shaped  hands ; — altogether  a  person  you  would  notice  in  a 
crowd. ^ 

Dr.  Knapp  possessed  two  '  notebooks '  of  this  Cornish 
tour.  Borrow  stayed  at  Penquite  with  his  cousins 
from  24th  December  to  9th  January,  then  he  went 
on  a  walking  tour  to  Land's  End,  through  Truro  and 
Penzance ;  he  was  back  at  Penquite  from  26th  January 
to  1st  February,  and  then  took  a  week's  tramp  to 
Tintagel,  King  Arthur's  Castle,  and  Pentire.  Naturally 
he  made  inquiries  into  the  language,  already  extinct,  but 
spoken  within   the  memory  of  the  older  inhabitants. 

*  Knapp's  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  97.      Letter  from  Mrs.  Robert  Taylor  to  Mrs. 
Wilkey. 


294    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

'  My  relations  are  most  excellent  people,'  he  wrote  to  his 
wife  from  London  on  his  way  back,  '  but  I  could  not 
understand  more  than  half  of  what  they  said.' 

I  have  only  one  letter  to  INIrs.  Borrow  written 
during  this  tour : 

To  Mrs.  George  Borrow 

Penquite,  211)1  Janry.  1854. 

My  dear  Carueta, — I  just  write  you  a  line  to  inform  you 
that  I  have  got  back  safe  here  from  the  Land's  End.  I  have 
received  your  two  letters,  and  hope  you  received  mine  from  the 
Land's  End.  It  is  probable  that  I  shall  yet  visit  one  or  two 
places  before  I  leave  Cornwall.  I  am  very  much  pleased  with  the 
country.  When  you  receive  this  if  you  please  to  write  a  hne  hy 
return  of  post  I  tliink  you  may ;  the  Trethinnick  people  wish  me 
to  stay  with  them  for  a  day  or  two.  When  you  see  the  Cobbs 
pray  remember  me  to  them ;  I  am  sorry  Horace  has  lost  his  aunt, 
he  will  miss  he?:     Love  to  Hen.     Ever  yours,  dearest, 

G.  Borrow. 

(Keep  this.) 

One  of  Borrow's  biographers,  Mr.  WalHng,  has 
given  us  the  best  account  of  that  journey  through 
Cornwall,^  and  his  explanation  of  why  Borrow  did  not 
write  the  Cornish  book  that  he  caused  to  be  advertised 
in  a  fly-leaf  of  The  Romany  Rye,  by  the  discouragement 
arising  out  of  the  dire  failure  of  that  book,  may  be 
accepted.^     Borrow  would  have  made  a  beautiful  book 

1  George  Borrow,  The  Man  and  His  Work.  By  R.  A.  J.  Walling-.  Cassell, 
1908. 

2  It  is  not  generally  known  that  not  less  than  eleven  books  by  Borrow 
were  advertised  in  the  first  edition  of  The  Romany  Rye  in  1857,  of  which  only 
two  were  published  in  his  lifetime  : 

1.  Celtic  Bards,  Chiefs,  and  Kings.     2  volumes. 

2.  Wild  Wales :  Its  People,  Language,  and  Scenery.     2  volumes. 

3.  Songs  of  Europe,  or  Metrical  Translations  from  all  the  European 
Languages.     2  volumes. 

4.  Kcempe  Viser.     Songs  about  Giants  and  Heroes.     2  volumes. 


A  VISIT  TO  CORNISH  KINSMEN       295 

upon  Cornwall.  Even  the  title,  Penquite  and  Pentyre  ; 
oi\  The  Head  of  the  Forest  and  the  Headhind,  has 
music  ill  it.  And  he  had  in  these  twenty  weeks  made 
himself  wonderfully  well  acquainted  not  only  with  the 
topography  of  the  principality,  but  with  its  folklore  and 
legend.  The  gulf  that  ever  separated  the  Borrow  of 
the  notebook  and  of  tlie  unprepared  letter  from  the 
Borrow  of  the  finished  manuscript  was  extraordinary, 
and  we  may  deplore  with  Mr.  Walling  the  absence  of 
this  among  Borrow's  many  unwritten  books. 

Borrow  was  back  in  Yarmouth  at  the  end  of 
February  1854  —  he  had  not  fled  the  country  as 
Dalrymple  had  suggested — but  in  July  he  was  off  again 
for  his  great  tour  in  Wales,  in  which  he  was  accompanied 
by  his  wife  and  daughter.  Of  that  tour  we  must  treat 
in  another  and  later  chapter,  for  Wild  Wales  was  not 
published  until  1862.  The  year  following  his  great 
tour  in  Wales  he  went  on  a  trip  to  the  Isle  of  Man. 

6.  The  Turkish  Jester.     1  volume. 

6.  Penquite  and  Pentyre ;  or,  The  Head  of  the  Forest  and  the  Headland. 
A  Book  on  Cornwall.     2  volumes. 

7.  Russian  Popular  Tales.     1  volume. 

8.  The  Sleeping  Bard.     1  volume. 

9.  Norman  Skalds,  Kings,  and  Earls.     2  volumes. 

10.  The  Death  of  Balder.     1  volume. 

11.  Bayr  Jairgey  and  Glion  Doo.     Wanderings  in  Search  of  Manx  Literature. 
1  volume. 

Of  these  The  Sleeping  Bard  appeared  in  1860  and  Wild  Wales  in  1862  ;  and 
after  Borrow's  death  The  Turkish  Jester  in  1884  and  The  Death  of  Balder  in 
1889.  The  remaining  seven  books  have  not  yet  been  published.  Their 
manuscript  is  partly  in  the  Knapp  Collection  now  iu  the  Hispanic  Society's 
possession,  partly  in  my  Collection,  while  certain  fragments  and  the  manuscript 
of  Romano  Lavo-Lil  are  in  the  possession  of  well-known  Borrow  enthusiasts. 


CHAPTER   XXVII 

IN  THE  ISLE  OF  MAN 

The  holiday  which  Borrow  gave  himself  the  year 
following  his  visit  to  Wales,  that  is  to  say,  in  Sep- 
tember 1855,  is  recorded  in  his  unpublished  diaries.  He 
never  wrote  a  book  as  the  outcome  of  that  journey, 
although  he  caused  one  to  be  advertised  under  the 
title  of  Bayr  J  air  gey  and  Glion  Doo:  Wanderings  in 
Search  of  3Ia7ix  Literature}  Dr.  Knapp  possessed  two 
volumes  of  these  notebooks  closely  written  in  pencil. 
These  he  reproduced  conscientiously  in  his  Life,  and 
indeed  here  we  have  the  most  satisfactory  portion  of  his 
book,  for  the  journal  is  transcribed  with  but  little  modi- 
fication, and  so  we  have  some  thirty  pages  of  genuine 
'  Borrow '  that  are  really  very  attractive  reading. 
Borrow,  it  will  be  remembered,  learnt  the  Irish 
language  as  a  mere  child,  much  to  his  father's  disgust. 
Although  he  never  loved  the  Irish  people,  the  Celtic 
Irish,  that  is  to  say,  whose  genial  temperament  was  so 
opposed  to  his  own,  he  did  love  the  Irish  language, 
which  he  more  than  once  declared  had  incited  him  to 
become  a  student  of  many  tongues.  He  never  made 
the  mistake  into  which  two  of  his  biographers  have 
fallen  of  calling  it  '  Erse. '  He  was  never  an  accurate 
student  of  the  Irish  language,  but  among  Englishmen  he 

'  In  vol.  ii.  of  The  Romany  Rye,  vide  supra. 
296 


IN  THE  ISLE  OF  MAN  297 

led  the  way  in  the  present-day  interest  in  that  tongue — 
an  interest  which  is  now  so  pronounced  among  scholars 
of  many  nationalities,  and  has  made  in  Ireland  so  definite 
a  revival  of  a  language  that  for  a  time  seemed  to  be  on 
the  way  to  extinction.    Two  translations  from  the  Irish 
are  to  be  found  in  his  Targum  published  so  far  back  as 
1835,  and  many  other  translations  from  the  Irish  poets 
were  among  the  unpublished  manuscripts  that  he  left 
behind  him.    It  would  therefore  be  with  peculiar  interest 
that  he  would  visit  the  Isle  of  Man  which,  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  nineteenth  century,  was  an  Irish-speaking 
land,  but  in  1855  was  at  a  stage  wlien  the  language 
was  falling  fast  into  decay.     What  survived  of  it  was 
still  Irish  with  trifling  variations  in  the  spelling  of  words. 
'  Cranu,'  a  tree,  for  example,  had  become  '  Cwan,'and  so 
on — although  the  pronunciation  was  apparently  much 
the   same.     When   the   tall,  white-haired  Enghshman 
talked  to  the  older  inhabitants  who  knew  something 
of  the  language  they  were  delighted.      '  Mercy  upon 
us,'  said  one  old  woman,  '  I  believe,  sir,  you  are  of  the 
old  Manx  ! '     Borrow  was  actually  wandering  in  search 
of  Manx  literature,  as  the  title  of  the  book  that  he 
announced  implied.     He  inquired  about  the  old  songs 
of  the  island,  and  of  everything  that  survived  of  its 
earlier  language.     Altogether  Borrow  must  have  had  a 
good  time  in  thus  following  his  favourite  pursuit. 

But  Dr.  Knapp's  two  notebooks,  which  are  so  largely 
taken  up  with  these  philological  matters,  are  less  human 
than  a  similar  notebook  that  has  fallen  into  my  hands. 
This  is  a  long  leather  pocket-book,  in  which,  under  the 
title  of  *  Expedition  to  the  Isle  of  Man,'  we  have, 
written  in  pencil,  a  quite  vivacious  account  of  his  adven- 
tures. It  records  that  Borrow  and  his  wife  and  daughter 
set   out  through   Bury  to  Peterborough,  Rugby,  and 


298    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Liverpool.  It  tells  of  the  admiration  with  which 
Peterborough's  *  noble  cathedral '  inspired  him.  Liver- 
pool he  calls  a  '  London  in  miniature  ' : 

Strolled  about  town  with  my  wife  and  Henrietta ;  wonderful 
docks  and  quays,  where  all  the  ships  of  the  world  seemed  to  be 
gathered — all  the  commerce  of  the  world  to  be  carried  on ;  St. 
George's  Crescent ;  noble  shops  ;  strange  people  walking  about,  an 
Herculean  mulatto,  for  example  ;  the  old  china  shop  ;  cups  with 
Chinese  characters  upon  them ;  an  horrible  old  Irishwoman  with 
naked  feet ;  Assize  Hall  a  noble  edifice. 

The  party  left  Liverpool  on  20th  August,  and 
Borrow,  when  in  sight  of  the  Isle  of  Man,  noticed  a 
lofty  ridge  of  mountains  rising  to  the  clouds : 

Entered  into  conversation  with  two  of  the  crew — Manx 
sailors — about  the  Manx  language  ;  one,  a  very  tall  man,  said  he 
knew  only  a  very  httle  of  it  as  he  was  born  on  the  coast,  but  that 
his  companion,  who  came  from  the  interior,  knew  it  well ;  said  it 
was  a  mere  gibberish.  This  I  denied,  and  said  it  was  an  ancient 
language,  and  that  it  was  like  the  Irish  ;  his  companion,  a  shorter 
man,  in  shirt  sleeves,  with  a  sharp,  eager  countenance,  now  opened 
his  mouth  and  said  I  was  right,  and  said  that  I  was  the  only 
gentleman  whom  he  had  ever  heard  ask  questions  about  the  Manx 
language.     I  spoke  several  Irish  words  which  they  understood. 

When  he  had  landed  he  continued  his  investiga- 
tions, asking  every  peasant  he  met  the  Manx  for  this 
or  that  English  word  : 

'Are  you  Manx?'  said  I.  'Yes,'  he  replied,  'I  am  Manx.' 
'  And  what  do  you  call  a  river  in  Manx  ?'  'A  river,'  he  replied. 
'  Can  you  speak  Manx  ? '  I  demanded.  '  Yes,'  he  replied, '  I  speak 
Manx.'  '  And  you  call  a  river  a  river  ? '  '  Yes,'  said  he,  '  I  do.' 
'  You  don't  call  it  owen  ?  '  said  I.  '  I  do  not,'  said  he.  I  passed 
on,  and  on  the  other  side  of  the  bridge  went  for  some  time  along 
an  avenue  of  trees,  passing  bv  a  stone  water-mill,  till  I  came  to  a 
public-house  on  the  left  hand.     Seeing  a  woman  looking  out  of 


IN  THE  ISI.E  OF  MAN  299 

the  window,  I  asked  her  to  what  place  the  road  led.  '  To  Castle- 
town,*' she  replied.  '  And  what  do  you  call  the  river  in  Manx  ? ' 
said  I.  '  We  call  it  an  owen,'  said  she.  '  So  I  thought,'  I  replied, 
and  after  a  little  further  discourse  returned,  as  the  night  was  now 
coming  fast  on. 

One  man  whom  Borrow  asked  if  there  were  any 
poets  in  Man  replied  that  he  did  not  believe  there  were, 
that  the  last  Manx  poet  had  died  some  time  ago  at 
Kirk  Conoshine,  and  this  man  had  translated  Parnell's 
Hermit  beautifully,  and  the  translation  had  been  printed. 
He  inquired  about  the  Runic  Stones,  which  he  continu- 
ally transcribed.  Under  date  Thursday,  30th  August, 
we  find  the  following  : 

This  day  year  I  ascended  Snowdon,  and  this  morning,  which 
is  very  fine,  I  propose  to  start  on  an  expedition  to  Castletown 
and  to  return  by  Peel. 

Very  gladly  would  I  follow  Borrow  more  in  detail 
through  this  interesting  holiday  by  means  of  his  diary ,^ 
but  it  would  make  my  book  too  long.  As  he  had  his 
wife  and  daughter  with  him  there  are  no  letters  by  him 
from  the  island.  But  wherever  Borrow  went  he  met 
people  who  were  interested  in  him,  and  so  I  find  the 
following  letter  among  his  Papers,  which  he  received  a 
year  after  his  return  : 


To  George  Borrow,  Esq. 

3  Albert  Terrace,  Douglas,  11  February  1856. 
My    dear    Sir, — If    experience    on    report    has    made    you 
acquainted   with  the  nature  of  true  Celtic  indolence  and    pro- 
crastination you  will  be  prepared  to  learn,  without  surprise,  that 

'  The  whole  of  this  diary,  which  is  thehest  original  work  that  Borrow  left 
behind  him  unpublished,  will  be  issued  in  my  edition  of  The  Collected  Works. 


300    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

your  Runic  stone  still  remains  unerected.^  In  vain  have  I  called 
time  after  time  upon  the  clerk  of  Braddan — in  vain  have  I  ex- 
postulated. Nothing  could  I  get  but  fair  words  and  fair  promises. 
First  he  was  very  rheumatic,  having,  according  to  his  own  account, 
contracted  his  dolorous  aches  in  the  course  of  that  five-hours''  job 
under  your  superintendence  in  the  steeple,  where,  it  seems,  a 
merciless  wind  is  in  the  habit  of  disporting  itself.  Then  the 
weather  was  so  unfavourable,  then  his  wife  was  ailing,  etc.,  etc. 
On  Saturday,  however,  armed  with  your  potent  note,  I  made 
another  attack,  and  obtained  a  promise  that  the  stone  should  be 
in  its  right  place  on  that  day  of  the  week  following.  So  I  await 
the  result.  My  own  private  impression  is  that  if  we  see  the 
achievement  complete  by  Easter  there  will  be  much  cause  for 
thankfulness. 

Many  thanks  for  The  Illustrated  News ;  I  read  the  article  with 
great  interest,  and  subsequently  studied  the  stone  itself  as  well  as 
its  awkward  position  in  its  nook  in  the  steeple  would  allow  me. 
Your  secret,  I  need  hardly  say,  was  faithfully  kept  till  the  receipt 
of  the  news  assured  me  that  it  need  be  a  secret  no  longer.  I  may 
just  mention  that  the  clerk  thinks  that  the  sovereign  you  left  will 
be  quite  enough  to  defray  the  expenses.  I  think  so  too  ;  at  least  if 
there  be  anything  more  it  cannot  be  worth  mentioning.  Though 
no  Manxman  myself  still  I  shall  take  the  liberty  of  thanking  you 
in  the  name  of  Mona — may  I  not  add  in  the  name  of  Antiquarian 
Science  too — for  your  liberality  in  this  matter.  Mrs.  Borrow,  I 
trust,  is  convalescent  by  this  time,  and  Miss  Clarke  well.  With 
our  united  kind  regards,  believe  me,  my  dear  Sir,  very  sincerely 
yours,  S.  W.  Wanton. 

And  even  three  years  later  we  find  that  Borrow  has 
not  forgotten  the  friends  of  that  Manx  holiday.  This 
letter  is  from  the  Vicar  of  Malew  in  acknowledgment 
of  a  copy  of  The  Romany  Rye  published  in  the  interval : 

^  Borrow  found  the  stone  had  fallen,  and  he  left  money  for  its  re-erection. 
He  copied  this  stone  on  13th  September  1855,  noting  in  his  diary  that 
Henrietta  sketched  the  church  while  he  copied  and  translated  the  inscription 
which  ran  as  follows — Thorleifr  Nitki  raised  this  Cross  to  Fiak,  son  of  his 
brother's  son,  the  date  being  1084  or  1194  a.d. 


IN  THE  ISLE  OF  MAN  801 


To  George  Borrow,  Esq. 

Malew  Vicarage,  Ballasalla,  Isle  of  Man,  27  Jany.  1859. 
My  dear  Sir, —  I  return  you  my  most  hearty  thanks  for  your 
most  handsome  present  of  Romany  Rye,  and  no  less  handsome 
letter  relative  to  your  tour  in  the  Isle  of  Man  and  the  literature 
of  the  Manx.  Both  I  value  very  highly,  and  from  both  I  shall 
derive  useful  hints  for  my  introduction  to  the  new  edition  of  the 
Manx  Grammar.  I  hope  you  will  have  no  objection  to  my 
quoting  a  passage  or  two  from  the  advertisement  of  your  forth- 
coming book ;  and  if  I  receive  no  intimation  of  your  dissent,  I 
shall  take  it  for  granted  that  I  have  your  kind  permission.  The 
whole  notice  is  so  apposite  to  my  purpose,  and  would  be  so  in- 
teresting to  every  Manxman,  that  I  would  fain  insert  the  whole 
bodily,  did  the  Author  and  the  limits  of  an  Introduction  permit. 
The  Grammar  will,  I  think,  go  to  press  in  March  next.  It  is  to 
be  published  under  the  auspices  of  '  The  Manx  Society,'  instituted 
last  year  '  for  the  publication  of  National  documents  of  the  Isle  of 
Man.""  As  soon  as  it  is  printed  I  hope  to  beg  the  favour  of  your 
acceptance  of  a  copy. — I  am,  my  dear  Sir,  your  deeply  obliged 
humble  servant,  William  Gill. 

The  letter  from  Mr.  Wanton  directs  us  to  the 
issue  of  The  Illustrated  London  News  for  8th  December 
1855,  where  we  find  the  folio  whig  note  on  the  Isle  of 
Man,  obviously  contributed  to  that  journal  by  Borrow, 
together  with  an  illustration  of  the  Runic  Stone,  which 
is  also  reproduced  here  : 


ANCIENT  RUNIC  STONE,  RECENTLY  FOUND  IN  THE 

ISLE  OF  MAN 

For  upwards  of  seventy  years  a  stone  which,  as  far  as  it  could  be 
discerned,  had  the  appearance  of  what  is  called  a  Danish  cross,  has 
been  known  to  exist  in  the  steeple  of  Kirk  Braddan,  Isle  of  Man. 
It  was  partly  bedded  in  mortar  and  stones  above  the  lintel  of  a 


302    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

doorway  leading  to  a  loft  above  the  gallery.  On  the  19th  of 
November  it  was  removed  from  its  place  under  the  superin- 
tendence of  an  English  gentleman  who  had  been  travelling  about 
the  island.  It  not  only  proved  to  be  a  Northern  cross,  but  a 
Runic  one  ;  that  is,  it  bore  a  Runic  inscription.  As  soon  as  the 
stone  had  been  taken  out  of  the  wall,  the  gentleman  in  question 
copied  the  inscription  and  translated  it,  to  the  best  of  his  ability, 
in  the  presence  of  the  church  clerk  who  had  removed  the  stone. 


^,&i^m 


RUNIC  STONE  FROM  THE  ISLE  OF  MAN 


The  Runes  were  in  beautiful  preservation,  and  looked  as  fresh  as 
if  they  had  just  come  out  of  the  workshop  of  Orokoin  Gaut. 
Unfortunately  the  upper  part  of  the  cross  was  partly  broken,  so 
that  the  original  inscription  was  not  entire.  In  the  inscription,  as 
^  it  is,  the  concluding  word  is  mutilated ;  in  its  original  state  it  was 
probably  'sonr,'  son;  the  Runic  character  which  answers  to  s 
being  distinct,  and  likewise  the  greater  part  of  one  which  stands 
for  o.  Yet  there  is  reason  for  believing  that  sonr  was  not  the 
concluding  word  of  the  original,  but  the  penultimate,  and  that 
the  original  terminated  with  some  Norwegian  name :  we  will 
suppose  'Olf.'  The  writing  at  present  on  the  stone  is  to  this 
effect : 

OTR.   RISTI.   KROS.  THUNU.   AFT.   FRUKA 

FATHOR.  SIN.   IN.  THORWIAORI.   S    .    .    .    (sONR  OLFs) 

OTR  RAISED  THIS  CROSS  TO  FRUKI  HIS  FATHER, 

THE  THORWIAORI,  So(n  OF  OLf). 

The  names  Otr  and  Fruki  have  never  before  been  found  on  any 
of  the  Runic  stones  in  the  Isle  of  Man.      The  words  In  .  .  . 


IN  THE  ISLE  OF  MAN  303 

Thorwiaori,  which  cither  denote  the  place  where  the  individual 
to  whom  they  relate  lived,  or  one  of  his  attributes  or  peculiar- 
ities, will  perhaps  fling  some  light  on  the  words  In  .  .  .  Aruthur, 
which  appear  on  the  beautiful  cross  which  stands  nearly  opposite 
the  door  of  Kirk  Braddan. 

The  present  cross  is  curiously  ornamented.  The  side  which 
we  here  present  to  the  public  bears  two  monsters,  perhaps  in- 
tended to  represent  dragons,  tied  with  a  single  cord,  which  passes 
round  the  neck  and  body  of  one  whose  head  is  slightly  averted, 
whilst,  though  it  passes  round  the  body  of  the  other,  it  leaves  the 
neck  free.  Little  at  present  can  be  said  about  the  other  side  of 
the  stone,  which  is  still  in  some  degree  covered  with  the  very  hard 
mortar  in  which  it  was  found  lying.  The  gentleman  of  whom  we 
have  already  spoken,  before  leaving  the  island,  made  arrangements 
for  placing  the  stone  beside  the  other  cross,  which  has  long  been 
considered  one  of  the  principal  ornaments  of  the  beautiful  church- 
yard of  Braddan. 


CHAPTER    XXVIIl 

OULTON  BROAD  AND  YARMOUTH 

George  Borrow  wandered  far  and  wide,  but  he  always 
retraced  his  footsteps  to  East  AngUa,  of  which  he  was 
so  justly  proud.  From  his  marriage  in  1840  until  his 
death  in  1881  he  lived  twenty-seven  years  at  Oulton  or 
at  Yarmouth.  *  It  is  on  sand  alone  that  the  sea  strikes 
its  true  music/  Borrow  once  remarked,  'Norfolk  sand' — 
and  it  was  in  the  waves  and  on  the  sands  of  the 
Norfolk  coast  that  Borrow  spent  the  happiest  hours 
of  his  restless  life.  Oulton  Cottage  is  only  about  two 
miles  from  Lowestoft,  and  so,  walking  or  driving,  these 
places  were  quite  near  one  another.  But  both  are  in 
Suffolk.  Was  it  because  Yarmouth— ten  miles  distant 
— is  in  Norfolk  that  it  was  always  selected  for  seaside 
residence  ?  I  suspect  that  the  careful  Mrs.  Borrow 
found  a  wider  selection  of  '  apartments  '  at  a  moderate 
price.  In  any  case  the  sea  air  of  Yarmouth  was  good 
for  his  wife,  and  the  sea  bathing  was  good  for  him,  and 
so  we  find  that  husband  and  wife  had  seven  separate 
residences  at  Yarmouth  during  the  years  of  Oulton 
life.^  But  Oulton  was  ever  to  be  Borrow's  head- 
quarters, even  though  between  1860  and  1874  he  had  a 
house  in  London.     Borrow  was  thirty-seven  years  of 

^  They  lived  first  at  169  King  Street,  then  at  two  addresses  unknown, 
then  successively  at  37,  38  and  39  Camperdown  Terrace,  their  last  address 
was  28  Trafalgar  Place. 

304 


Copyrig:ht  oj  Mrs.  Simjns  Kcei'C 
A  HITHERTO  UNPUBLISHED  PORTRAIT  OF  GEORGE  BORROW 

Taken  in  the  garden  of  Mrs.  Simnis  Reeve  of  Norwich  in  1848.  This  is  the 
only  photograph  of  George  Borrow  extant,  although  two  paintings  of  him  exist, 
one  by  Henry  Wyndham  Phillips,  which  forms  the  frontispiece  of  this  volume, 
taken  in  1843,  and  an  earlier  portrait  hv  his  brother  John,  which  will  be  found 

facing  page  32. 


304 


OULTON  BROAD  AND  YARMOUTH    305 

asre  when  he  settled  down  at  Onlton.  He  was,  he  tells 
us  in  The  Romaiuj  Rijc, '  in  tolerably  easy  circumstances 
and  willing  to  take  some  rest  after  a  life  of  labour.' 
Their  home  was  a  cottage  on  the  Broad,  for  the  Hall, 
which  was  also  Mrs.  Borrow's  property,  was  let  on 
lease  to  a  farmer.^  The  cottage,  however,  was  an  ex- 
tremely pleasant  residence  with  a  lawn  running  down 
to  the  river.  A  more  substantial  house  has  been  built 
on  this  site  since  Borrow's  day.  The  summer-house 
is  generally  assumed  to  be  the  same,  but  has  certainly 
been  reroofed  since  the  time  when  Henrietta  Clarke 
drew  the  picture  of  it  that  is  reproduced  in  this 
book.  Probably  the  whole  summer-house  is  new, 
but  at  any  rate  the  present  structure  stands  on  the 
site  of  the  old  one.  Here  Borrow  did  his  work, 
Avrote  and  wrote  and  wrote,  until  he  had,  as  he  said, 
'  Mountains  of  manuscripts.'  Here  first  of  all  he 
completed  The  Zincali  (1841),  commenced  in  Seville; 
then  he  wrote  or  rather  arranged  The  Bible  in  Spain 
(1843),  and  then  at  long  intervals,  diversified  by  ex- 
tensive travel  holidays,  he  wrote  Lavengro  (1851),  21ie 
Romamj  Rye  (1857),  and  Wild  Wales  (I860),— these 
are  the  five  books  and  their  dates   that  we  most  as- 

1  Borrow's  letters  were  frequently  addressed  to  Oultou  Hall,  but  he  never 
lived  here.  Oulton  Hall  was  the  name  given  to  the  farm  house  which  went 
with  Oulton  Hall  Farm.  '  Old  inhabitants/  writes  Mr.  William  Mackay  of 
Oulton  Broad  to  me,  '  remember  that  seventy  years  ago  it  was  occupied  by 
Skepper,  who  was  succeeded  by  Grimmer,  who  was  succeeded  by  Smith.' 
'  1  can  find  no  one/  continues  Mr.  Mackay,  '  who  recollects  old  Mrs.  Borrow 
lodging  at  the  farm  house.  But  what  more  likely.''  And  it  was  charac- 
teristic of  Borrow — don't  you  think? — that  he  should  holdout  "Oulton  Hall" 
as  an  address  to  those  who  were  not  likely  to  visit  him.'  AVhen  Mrs.  Borrow, 
senior,  was  persuaded  to  leave  Willow  Lane,  Norwich,  for  Oulton,  her  son 
took  lodgings  for  her  at  the  '  Hall,'  and  here  she  died.  Very  commonplace 
farm  houses  in  East  Anglia  are  frequently  called  'halls,'  to  the  great 
amazement  of  visitors  from  other  counties,  although  there  are  some  very 
noble  ones,  as,  for  example,  Kirkstead,  Swiueshead,  Parham  and  Dalling. 

U 


306    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

sociate  with  Borrow's  sojourn  at  O niton.  When  JVild 
Wales  was  published  he  had  removed  to  London. 
Borrow  brought  with  him  to  Oulton,  as  we  have  said,  a 
beautiful  Arabian  horse,  Sidi  Habismilk,  and  a  Jewish 
servant,  Hayim  Ben  Attar.  The  horse  remained  to  de- 
light the  neighbourhood.  It  followed  Borrow  like  a  dog 
when  he  was  not  riding  it.  The  Jew  had  soon  had  enough 
of  this  rural  retreat  and  sighed  for  a  sunnier  clime. 
Thus,  under  date  1843, 1  find  among  my  Borrow  Papers 
the  following  letter  to  a  firm  of  shipbrokers : 

To  Messrs.  Nickols  and  Marshal,  London. 

Ath  July -[SiS. 
Gentlemen, — Having  received  a  communication  from  Liverpool 
from  Harry  Pahner,  Esq.,  stating  that  you  are  his  agents  in 
London,  and  that  as  such  he  has  requested  you  to  communicate 
with  us  relative  to  a  passage  required  for  a  man  sent  to  Cadiz  or 
Gibraltar,  I  shall  as  briefly  as  possible  state  the  particulars. 
Mr.  Palmer  names  £1  or  £8  as  the  lowest  which  he  thinks  it  will 
cost  us  to  get  him  to  Gibraltar  or  Cadiz.  This  we  consider  is  a 
large  sum  when  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  he  is  to  fare  as  the 
ship's  crew  fare,  and  with  the  exception  of  a  berth  to  lie  down 
in,  no  difference  is  required  at  this  beautiful  season  of  the  year. 
I  must  here  state  as  an  excuse  for  the  above  remark  that  this  man 
came  to  England  at  his  own  particular  desire.  I  have  been  at 
much  expense  about  him.  He  has  had  good  wages,  but  now  that 
he  wants  to  get  back  to  his  own  country  the  whole  expense  is 
thrown  upon  me,  as  he  has  saved  no  money,  and  we  wish  it  to  be 
clearly  understood  by  the  captain  who  will  take  him  that  when  he 
is  once  off  from  England  and  his  passage  paid  that  we  will  be 
responsible  for  no  further  expense  whatever.  We  do  not  Avant  to 
get  him  to  Tangier,  as  we  shall  put  money  in  his  pocket  which 
will  enable  him  to  pay  for  a  passage  across  if  he  wishes  to  go 
there,  but  we  will  pay  only  to  Gibraltar  or  Cadiz.  A  steam 
vessel  sails  from  Yarmouth  bridge  every  Wednesday  and  Friday. 
This  will  be  the  most  direct  and  safe  way  to  send  him  to  London, 


OULTON  BROAD  AND  YARMOUTH    307 

and  then  trouble  you  to  have  him  met  at  the  steamer  and  con- 
veyed to  the  ship  at  once  in  which  he  is  to  have  his  passage.  All 
therefore  that  remains  to  be  done  is  to  trouble  you  to  give  us  a 
few  days'  notice  with  time  to  get  him  up  per  Yarmouth  steamer. 
I  beg  to  thank  you  for  the  willingness  you  expressed  to  Mr.  Palmer 
to  assist  me  in  this  affair  by  getting  as  cheap  a  passage  as  you  can 
and  seeing  him  on  board  and  the  passage  not  paid  till  the  ship 
sails.  You  no  doubt  can  quite  understand  our  anxious  feelings 
upon  the  subject  from  your  connection  with  shipping,  and  con- 
sequently knowing  what  foreigners  generally  are. — I  am,  Sir,  Your 
obedient  servant,  G.  H.  Borrow.^ 

Then  we  have  the  following  document  with  which 
his  cautious  master  provided  himself: 

A  Statement  of  Hayim  Ben  Attar  previous  to  his  leaving 

England. 

I  declare  that  it  was  my  own  wish  to  come  to  England  with 
my  master  G.  H.  Borrow,  who  offered  to  send  me  to  my  own 
country  before  he  left  Spain.  That  I  have  regularly  received  the 
liberal  wages  he  agreed  to  give  me  from  the  first  of  my  coming  to 
him.  That  I  have  been  treated  justly  and  kindly  by  him  during 
my  stay  in  England,  and  that  I  return  to  my  country  at  my  own 
wish  and  request,  and  at  my  master's  expense.  To  this  statement, 
which  I  declare  to  be  true,  I  sign  my  name. — Hayim  Ben  Attar. 

Declared  before  me  this  9  of  August  1843. 

W.  M.  Hammond,  Magistrate  for  Great  Yarmouth. 

'  This  was  in  reply  to  a  letter  from  Mr.  Harry  Palmer  which  ran  as 
follows  : — '  When  in  London  on  Thursday  I  saw  the  captain  and  brothers  of 
several  vessels  bound  to  Gibraltar  and  Cadiz,  and  the  passage  money  required 
will  be  about  £10,  The  Warhlington  will  leave  to-morrow,  the  latter  part  of 
next  week,  and  should  you  decide  upon  sending  your  servant  I  have  re- 
quested Messrs.  Nickols  and  Marshal  to  attend  to  any  communication  you 
may  make  to  tliem,  who  will  do  their  utmost  to  get  him  out  at  the  least 
possible  expense,  and  pay  the  passage  money  upon  his  leaving  England,  and 
make  arrangements  with  the  captain  for  his  passage  to  Tangier.  As  Gibraltar 
would  be  as  convenient  as  Cadiz,  have  little  doubt  Messrs.  Nickols  and  Co. 
would  be  able  to  get  him  out  for  £7  or  £8.  I  have  a  vessel  now  loading  in 
this  port  for  Barcelona,  to  which  port  (if  you  could  send  him  to  Liverpool) 
should  be  happy  to  take  him  and  then  send  him  forward  to  his  destination.' 


308    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

1  find  a  letter  among  my  Papers  which  bears  no 
name,  and  is  probably  a  draft.  It  contains  an  interest- 
ing reference  to  Hayim  Ben  Attar,  and  hence  I  give 
it  here : 

SiK,_I  have  the  honour  to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  your 
letter  of  the  17th  inst.,  which  ray  friend,  Mr.  Murray,  has  just 
forwarded  to  me.  I  am  afraid  that  you  attribute  to  me  powers 
and  information  which  I  am  by  no  means  conscious  of  possessing ; 
I  should  feel  disposed  to  entertain  a  much  higher  opinion  of 
myself  than  I  at  present  do  could  I  for  a  moment  conceive  myself 
gifted  with  the  talent  of  inducing  any  endeavour  to  dismiss  from 
his  mind  a  theory  of  the  reasonableness  of  which  appears  to  him 
obvious.  Nevertheless,  as  you  do  me  the  honour  of  asking  my 
opinion  with  respect  to  the  theory  of  Gypsies  being  Jews  by 
origin,  I  hasten  to  answer  to  the  following  effect.  I  am  not 
prepared  to  acknowledge  the  reasonableness  of  any  theory  which 
cannot  be  borne  out  by  the  slightest  proof  Against  the  theory 
may  be  offered  the  following  arguments  which  I  humbly  consider 
to  be  unanswerable.  The  Gypsies  differ  from  the  Jews  in  feature 
and  complexion — in  whatever  part  of  the  world  you  find  the 
Gypsy  you  recognise  him  at  once  by  his  features  which  are 
virtually  the  same — the  Jew  likewise  has  a  peculiar  countenance 
by  which  at  once  he  may  be  distinguished  as  a  Jew,  but  which 
would  certainly  prevent  the  probability  of  his  being  considered  as 
a  scion  of  the  Gypsy  stock — in  proof  of  which  assertion  I  can 
adduce  the  following  remarkable  instance. 

I  have  in  my  service  a  Jew,  a  native  of  Northern  Africa.  Last 
summer  I  took  him  with  me  to  an  encampment  of  Romanies  or 
Gypsies  near  my  home  at  Oulton  in  Suffolk.  I  introduced  him  to 
the  Chief,  and  said.  Are  ye  not  dui  patos  (two  brothers).  The 
Gypsy  passed  his  hand  over  the  Jew's  face  and  stared  him  in  the 
eyes,  then  turning  to  me  he  answered — we  are  not  two  brothers, 
not  two  brothers — this  man  is  no  rom— I  believe  him  to  be  a  Jew. 
Now  this  Gypsy  has  been  in  the  habit  of  seeing  German  and 
English  Jews  who  must  have  been  separated  from  their  African 
brothers  for  a  term  of  1700  years— yet  he  recognised  the  Jew  of 
Troy  for  what  he  was — a  Jew — and  without  hesitation  declared 
that  he  was  not  a  rom  ;  the  Jews,  therefore,  and  the  Gypsies  have 


OULTON  BROAD  AND  YARMOUTH    309 

each  their  peculiar  and  distinctive  features,  which  disprove  the 
impossibility  of  their  having  been  originally  the  same  people. — 
Your  obedient  servant,  George  Borrow, 

I  find  also  in  this  connection  a  letter  from  Tangier 
addressed  to  '  Mr.  H.  George  Borrow '  under  date 
2nd  November  1847.  It  tells  us  that  the  worthy 
Jew  longs  once  again  to  see  the  '  dear  face '  of  his 
master.  Since  he  left  his  service  he  has  married 
and  has  two  sons,  but  he  is  anxious  to  return  to 
England  if  that  same  master  will  find  him  work.  We 
can  imagine  that  by  this  time  Borrow  had  had  enough 
of  Hayim  Ben  Attar,  and  that  his  answer  was  not 
encouraging. 

But  by  far  the  best  glimpses  of  Borrow  during 
these  years  of  Suffolk  life  are  those  contained  in  a 
letter  contributed  by  his  friend,  Elizabeth  Harvey, 
to  The  Eastern  Daily  Press  of  Norwich  over  the 
initials 'E.H.':' 

When  I  knew  Mr.  Borrow  he  lived  in  a  lovely  cottage  whose 
garden  sloped  down  to  the  edge  of  Oulton  Broad.  He  had  a 
wooden  room  built  on  the  very  margin  of  the  water,  where  he  had 
many  strange  old  books  in  various  languages.  I  remember  he  once 
put  one  before  me,  telling  me  to  read  it.  '  Oh,  I  can't,'  I  replied. 
He  said,  '  You  ought,  it 's  your  own  language."*  It  was  an  old 
Saxon  book.  He  used  to  spend  a  great  deal  of  his  time  in  this 
room  writing,  translating,  and  at  times  singing  strange  words  in  a 
stentorian  voice,  while  passers-by  on  the  lake  would  stop  to  listen 
with  astonishment  and  curiosity  to  the  singular  sounds.  He  was 
6  feet  3  inches,  a  splendid  man,  with  handsome  hands  and  feet. 

^  The  Eastern  Daily  Press,  1st  October  1892.  The  Harveys  were  great 
friends  of  Borrow,  and  he  left  one  of  them  co-executor  with  Mrs.  MacOubrey 
of  his  estate.  Miss  Harvey's  impressions  make  an  interesting  contrast  to 
those  of  Miss  Frances  Power  Cobbe.  I  have  to  thank  Mr.  A.  Cozens-Hardy, 
the  editor  of  The  Eastern  Daily  Press,  for  courteously  furnishing  me  with 
copies  of  these  letters,  and  for  giving  me  permission  to  use  them  here. 


310    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

He  wore  neither  whiskers,  beard,  nor  moustache.  His  features  were 
very  handsome,  but  his  eyes  were  peculiar,  being  round  and  rather 
small,  but  very  piercing,  and  now  and  then  fierce.  He  would 
sometimes  sing  one  of  his  Romany  songs,  shaice  his  fist  at  me  and 
look  quite  wild.  Then  he  would  ask,  '  Aren't  you  afraid  of  me  ? ' 
'  No,  not  at  all,''  I  would  say.  Then  he  would  look  just  as  gentle 
and  kind,  and  say, '  God  bless  you,  I  would  not  hurt  a  hair  of  your 
head.'  He  was  an  expert  swimmer,  and  used  to  go  out  bathing, 
and  dive  under  water  an  immense  time.  On  one  occasion  he  was 
bathing  with  a  friend,  and  after  plunging  in  nothing  was  seen  of 
him  for  some  while.  His  friend  began  to  be  alarmed,  when  he 
heard  Borrow's  voice  a  long  way  off  exclaiming,  '  There,  if  that 
had  been  written  in  one  of  my  books  they  would  have  said  it  was 
a  lie,  wouldn't  they?'  He  was  very  fond  of  animals,  and  the 
animals  were  fond  of  him.  He  would  go  for  a  walk  with  two  dogs 
and  a  cat  following  him.  The  cat  would  go  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
or  so  and  then  turn  back  home.  He  delighted  to  go  for  long  walks 
and  enter  into  conversation  with  any  one  he  might  meet  on  the 
road,  and  lead  them  into  histories  of  their  lives,  belongings,  and 
experiences.  When  they  used  some  word  peculiar  to  Norfolk  (or 
Suffolk)  countrymen  he  would  say,  '  Why,  that 's  a  Danish  word.' 
By  and  by  the  man  would  use  another  peculiar  expression,  '  Why, 
that 's  Saxon  ' ;  a  little  later  on  another,  '  Why,  that 's  French.' 
And  he  would  add, '  Wh}^  what  a  wonderful  man  you  ai'e  to  speak 
so  many  languages.'  One  man  got  very  angry,  but  Mr.  Borrow 
was  quite  unconscious  that  he  had  given  any  offence.  He  spoke  a 
great  number  of  languages,  and  at  the  Exhibition  of  1851 ,  whither 
he  went  with  his  stepdaughter,  he  spoke  to  the  different  foreigners 
in  their  own  language,  until  his  daughter  saw  some  of  them  whis- 
pering together  and  looking  as  if  they  thought  he  was  '  uncanny,' 
and  she  became  alarmed  and  drew  him  away.  He,  however,  did 
not  like  to  hear  the  English  language  adulterated  with  the  intro- 
duction of  foreign  words.  If  his  wife  or  friends  used  a  foreign 
word  in  conversation,  he  would  say,  '  What 's  that,  trying  to  come 
over  me  with  strange  languages.' 

I  have  gone  for  many  a  walk  with  him  at  Oulton.  He  used  to 
go  on,  singing  to  himself  or  quite  silent,  quite  forgetting  me  until 
he  came  to  a  high  hill,  when  he  would  turn  round,  seize  my  hand, 
and  drag  me  up.     Then  he  would  sit  down  and  enjoy  the  prospect. 


OULTON  BROAD  AND  YARMOUTH    311 

He  was  a  great  lover  of  nature,  and  very  fond  of  his  trees.    He  quite 
fretted  if,  by  some  mischance,  he  lost  one.     He  did  not  shoot  or 
hunt.     He  rode  his  Arab  at  times,  but  walking  was  his  favourite 
exercise.     He  was  subject  to  fits  of  nervous  depression.     At  times 
also  he  suffered  from  sleeplessness,  when  he  would  get  up  and  walk 
to  Norwich  (25  miles),  and  return  the  next  night  recovered.     His 
fondness  for  the  gypsies  has  been  noticed.     At  Oulton  he  used  to 
allow  them  to  encamp  in  his  grounds,  and  he  would  visit  them, 
with  a  friend  or  alone,  talk  to  them  in  Romany,  and  sing  Romany 
songs.     He  was  very  fond  of  ghost  stories  and  believed  in  the  super- 
natural.    He  was  keenly  sympathetic  with  any  one  who  was  in 
trouble  or  suffering.     He  was  no  man  of  business  and  very  guile- 
less, and  led  a  very  harmless,  quiet  life  at  Oulton,  spending  his 
evenings  at  home  with  his  wife  and  step-daughter,  generally  read- 
ing all  the  evening.     He  was  very  hospitable  in  his  own  home,  and 
detested  meanness.     He  was  moderate  in  eating  and  drinking,  took 
very  little  breakfast,  but  ate  a  very  great  quantity  at  dinner,  and  then 
had  only  a  draught  of  cold  water  before  going  to  bed.     He  wrote 
much  in  praise  of '  strong  ale,'  and  was  very  fond  of  good  ale,  of 
whose  virtue  he  had  a  great  idea.     Once  I  was  speaking  of  a  lady 
who  was  attached  to   a  gentleman,  and  he  asked,  '  Well,  did  he 
make  her  an  offer  r     '  No,'  I  said.     '  Ah,'  he  exclaimed,  '  if  she  had 
given  him  some  good  ale  he  would.'     But  although  he  talked  so 
much    about    ale    I  never   saw  him    take    much.       He   was   very 
temperate,  and  would  eat  what  was  set  before  him,  often  not  think- 
ing of  what  he  was  doing,  and  he  never  refused  what  was  offered 
him.     He  took  much  pleasure  in  music,  especially  of  a  light  and 
lively   character.      My  sister  would  sing  to  him,  and  I    played. 
One    piece  he  seemed  never  to  tire  of  hearing.     It  was  a  polka, 
'The  Redowa,'  I  think,  and  when  I  had  finished  he  used  to  say, 

'  Play  that  again,  E .'     He  was  very    polite  and  gentlemanly 

in  ladies'  society,  and  we  all  liked  him. 

It  is  refreshing  to  read  this  tribute,  from  which  I 
have  omitted  nothing  salient,  because  a  very  disagree- 
able Borrow  has  somehow  grown  up  into  a  tradition.  1 
note  in  reading  some  of  the  reviews  of  Dr.  Knapp's 
Life  that  he  is  charged,  or  half-charged,  with  suppressing 


312    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

facts,  'because  they  do  not  reflect  credit  upon  the 
subject  of  his  biography.'  Now,  there  were  really  no 
facts  to  suppress.  Borrow  was  at  times  a  very  irritable 
man,  he  was  a  very  self-centred  one.  His  egotism 
might  even  be  pronounced  amazing  by  those  who  had 
never  met  an  author.  But  those  of  us  who  have, 
recognise  that  with  very  few  exceptions  they  are  all 
egotists,  although  some  conceal  it  from  the  unob- 
servant more  deftly  than  others.  Let  me  recall  Mr. 
Arthur  Christopher  Benson's  verses  on  'My  Poet.' 

He  came  ;  I  met  him  face  to  face, 

And  shrank  amazed^  dismayed  ;  I  saw 

No  patient  depth,  no  tender  grace, 
No  prophet  of  the  eternal  law. 

But  weakness,  fretting  to  be  great. 
Self-consciousness  with  sidelong  eye, 

The  impotence  that  dares  not  wait 
For  honour,  crying  '  This  is  I.' 

The  tyrant  of  a  sullen  hour, 

He  frowned  away  our  mild  content ; 

And  insight  only  gave  him  power 

To  see  the  slights  that  were  not  meant. ^ 

Many  successful  and  unsuccessful  authors,  living 
and  dead,  are  here  described,  and  Borrow  was  far  from 
one  of  the  worst.  He  was  quarrelsome,  and  I  rather 
like  him  for  that.  If  he  was  a  good  hater  he  was  also 
a  very  loyal  friend,  as  we  find  Miss  Elizabeth  Harvey 
and,  in  after  years,  Mr.  Theodore  Watts -Dunton 
testifying.  Moreover,  Borrow  had  a  grievance  of  a 
kind  that  has  not  often  befallen  a  man  of  his  literary 
power.   He  had  written  a  great  book  in  Lavengro,  and  the 

1  The  Poem.s  of  A.  C.  Benson,  p.  213  :    Published  by  John  Lane,  1909. 


OULTON  BKOAD  AND  YARMOUTH    313 

critics  and  the  public  refused  to  recognise  that  it  was  a 
great  book.  Many  authors  of  power  have  died  young  and 
unrecognised  ;  but  recognition  has  usually  come  to  those 
men  of  genius  who  have  lived  into  middle  age.  It 
did  not  come  to  Borrow.  He  had  therefore  a  right  to 
be  soured.  This  sourness  found  expression  in  many 
ways.  Borrow,  most  sound  of  churchmen,  actually 
quarrelled  with  his  vicar  over  the  tempers  of  their 
respective  dogs.  Both  the  vicar,  the  Rev.  Edwin 
Proctor  Denniss,  and  his  parishioner  wrote  one  another 
acrid  letters.     Here  is  Borrow's  parting  shot : 

Circumstances  over  which  Mr.  Borrow  has  at  present  no  con- 
trol will  occasionally  bring  him  and  his  family  under  the  same  roof 
with  Mr.  Denniss  ;  that  roof,  however,  is  the  roof  of  the  House  of 
God,  and  the  prayers  of  the  Church  of  England  are  wholesome 
from  whatever  mouth  they  may  proceed.^ 

Surely  that  is  a  kind  of  quarrel  we  have  all  had  in 
our  day,  and  we  think  ourselves  none  the  less  virtuous 
in  consequence.  Then  there  was  Borrow's  very  natural 
ambition  to  be  made  a  magistrate  of  Suffolk.  He  tells 
Mr.  John  Murray  in  1842  that  he  has  caught  a  bad  cold 
by  getting  up  at  night  in  pursuit  of  poachers  and 
thieves.  '  A  terrible  neighbourhood  this,'  he  adds, '  not 
a  magistrate  dare  do  his  duty.'  And  so  in  the  next 
year  he  wrote  again  to  the  same  correspondent : 

Present  my  compliments  to  Mr.  Gladstone,  and  tell  him  that 
the  Bihle  in  Spain  will  have  no  objection  to  becoming  one  of  the 
'  Great  Unpaid.' 

Mr.  Gladstone,  although  he  had  admired  The  Bible 
in  Spain,  and  indeed  had  even  suggested  the  modifica- 
tion of  one  of  its  sentences,  did  nothing.     Lockhart, 

^  Dr.  Knapp's  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  41. 


314    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Lord  Clarendon,  and  others  who  were  apphed  to  were 
equally  powerless  or  indifferent.      Borrow  never  got 
his  magistracy.     To-day  no  man  of  equal  eminence  in 
literature    could   possibly    have  failed  of  so  slight  an 
ambition.     Moreover,  Borrow  wanted  to  be  a  J.P.,  not 
from  mere  snobbery  as  many  might,  but  for  a  definite, 
practical  object.     I  am  afraid  he  would  not  have  made 
a  very  good  magistrate,  and  perhaps  inquiry  had  made 
that    clear    to    the    authorities.      Lastly,    there    was 
Borrow's  quarrel  with  the  railway  which  came  through 
his  estate.      He  had  thoughts   of  removing  to  Bury, 
where  Dr.  Hake  lived,  or  to  Troston  Hall,  once  the 
home    of    the    interesting     Capell     Lofft.       But    he 
was   not   to  leave  Oulton.     In   intervals   of  holidays, 
journeys,  and  of  sojourn  in  Yarmouth  it  was  to  remain 
his  home  to  the  end.     In  1849  his  mother  joined  him 
at  Oulton.     She  had  resided  for  thirty-three  years  at 
the  Willow  Lane  Cottage.     She  was  now  seventy-seven 
years  of  age.     She  lived-on  near  her  son  as  a  tenant  of 
his  tenant  at  Oulton  Hall  until  her  death  nine  years 
later,    dying    in    1858    in    her    eighty-seventh    year. 
She  lies  buried  in   Oulton  Churcliyard,  with  a  tomb 
thus  inscribed : 

Sacred  to  the  memory  of  Ann  Borrow,  widow  of  Captain 
Thomas  Borrow.  She  died  on  the  16th  of  August  1858,  aged 
eighty-six  years  and  seven  months.  She  was  a  good  wife  and  a 
good  mother. 

During  these  years  at  Oulton  we  have  many 
glimpses  of  Borrow.  Dr.  Jessopp,  for  example,  has 
recorded  in  The  Athenceum^  newspaper  his  own  hero- 

1  The  Athcnaum,  July  8,  1893.  Dr.  Jessopp's  feeling-  for  Borrow  was 
much  more  kindly  then  than  when  he  supplied  to  the  London  Daily  Chronicle 
of  80th  April  1900  an  article  which  had  better  not  have  been  written. 


OULTON  EROAD  AND  YARMOUTH   315 

worsliip  for  the  autlior  of  iMVcn^ro,  wliom  he  was 
never  to  meet.  Tliis  enthusiasm  for  I^ivengro  was 
shared  by  certain  of  his  Norfolk  friends  of  those 
days : 

Among  those  friends  were  two  who,  I  beHeve,  are  still  alive, 
and  who  about  the  year  1846  set  out,  without  telling  me  of  their 
intention,  on  a  pilgrimage  to  Oulton  to  see  George  Borrow  in  the 
flesh.  In  those  days  the  journey  was  not  an  inconsiderable  one; 
and  though  my  friends  must  have  known  that  I  would  have  given 
my  ears  to  be  of  the  party,  I  suppose  they  kept  their  project  to 
themselves  for  i-easons  of  their  own.  Two,  they  say,  are  company 
and  three  are  none;  two  men  could  ride  in  a  gig  for  sixty  miles 
without  much  difficulty,  and  an  odd  man  often  spoils  sport.  At 
any  rate,  they  left  me  out,  and  one  day  they  came  back  full  of 
malignant  pride  and  joy  and  exultation,  and  they  flourished  their 
information  before  me  with  boastings  and  laughter  at  my  ferocious 
jealousy;  for  they  had  seen,  and  talked  with,  and  eaten  and  drunk 
with,  and  sat  at  the  feet  of  the  veritable  George  Borrow,  and  had 
grasped  his  mighty  hand.  To  me  it  was  too  provoking.  But 
what  had  they  to  tell  ? 

They  found  him  at  Oulton,  living,  as  they  affirmed,  in  a  house 
which  belonged  to  Mrs.  Borrow  and  which  her  first  husband  had 
left  her.  The  household  consisted  of  himself,  his  wife,  and  his 
wife's  daughter ;  and  among  his  other  amusements  he  employed 
himself  in  training  some  young  horses  to  follow  him  about  like 
dogs  and  come  at  the  call  of  his  whistle.  As  my  two  friends  were 
talking  with  him  Borrow  sounded  his  whistle  in  a  paddock  near 
the  house,  which,  if  I  remember  rightly,  was  surrounded  by  a  low 
wall.  Immediately  two  beautiful  horses  came  bounding  over  the 
fence  and  trotted  up  to  their  master.  One  put  his  nose  into 
Borrow's  outstretched  hand  and  the  other  kept  snuffing  at  his 
pockets  in  expectation  of  the  usual  bribe  for  confidence  and  good 
behaviour.  Borrow  could  not  but  be  flattered  by  the  young 
Cambridge  men  paying  him  the  frank  homage  they  offered,  and 
he  treated  them  with  the  robust  and  cordial  hospitality  character- 
istic of  the  man.  One  or  two  things  they  learnt  which  I  do  not 
feel  at  liberty  to  repeat. 


316    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Mr.  Arthur  W.  Upcher  of  Sheringham  Hall, 
Cromer,  also  provided  in  The  Athenceum'^  a  quaint 
reminiscence  of  Borrow  in  which  he  recalled  that 
Lavengro  had  called  upon  Miss  Anna  Gurney.  This 
lady  had,  assuredly  with  less  guile,  treated  him  much 
as  Frances  Cobbe  would  have  done.  She  had  taken 
down  an  Arabic  grammar,  and  put  it  into  his  hand, 
asking  for  explanation  of  some  difficult  point  which  he 
tried  to  decipher ;  but  meanwhile  she  talked  to  him 
continuously.  '  I  could  not,'  said  Borrow,  study  the 
Arabic  grammar  and  listen  to  her  at  the  same  time,  so 
I  threw  down  the  book  and  ran  out  of  the  room.'  He 
soon  after  met  Mr.  Upcher,  to  whom  he  made  an 
interesting  revelation : 

He  told  us  there  were  three  personages  in  the  world  whom  he 
had  always  a  desire  to  see ;  two  of  these  had  sHpped  through  his 
fingers,  so  he  was  determined  to  see  the  tliird.  '  Pray,  Mr.  Borrow, 
who  were  they  ? '  He  held  up  three  fingers  of  his  left  hand  and 
pointed  them  off  with  the  forefinger  of  the  riglit  :  the  first 
Daniel  O'Connell,  the  second  Lamplighter  (the  sire  of  Phosphorus, 
Lord  Berners's  winner  of  the  Derby),  the  third,  Anna  Gurney. 
The  first  two  were  dead  and  he  had  not  seen  them ;  now  he  had 
come  to  see  Anna  Gurney,  and  this  was  the  end  of  his  visit. 

Mr.  William  ^lackay,  who  now  lives  at  Oulton 
Broad,  where  he  has  heard  all  the  village  gossip  about 
Borrow  and  his  menage,  and  we  may  hope  has  dis- 
counted it  fully,  furnishes  me  with  the  following 
impression  of  Borrow,  which  is  of  a  much  later  date 
than  those  I  have  just  given  : 

I  met  Borrow  in  1869  at  the  house  of  Dr.  Gordon  Hai<e  at 
Coombe  End,  near  the  top  of  Roehampton  Lane,  Wimbledon 
Common.     My  recollection  is  of  a  tall,  broad-shouldered  old  man, 

1  Letter  to  The  Athencpum,  July  22,  1893. 


OULTON  BROAD  AND  YARMOUTH    317 

stooping  a  little,  engaged  in  reading  a  small  volume  held  close  to 
his  eyes.  Something  Yorkshire  about  his  powerful  build,  but  little 
tolerance  or  benevolence  in  his  expression.  A  fine,  strongly 
marked  clean  shaven  face,  but  with  no  kindliness  or  sense  of 
humour  indicated  in  its  lines.  In  loosely  made  broadcloth  he 
gave  the  idea  of  a  nonconformist  minister — a  Unitarian,  judging 
from  the  intellectuality  betrayed  in  his  countenance.  To  me  he 
was  always  civil  and,  even,  genial,  for  he  did  not  know  that  I  was 
a  writing  fellow.  But  to  others  casually  met  he  seemed  to  be 
invariably  and  intolerably  rude.  He  could  not  brook  contradic- 
tion— particularly  on  religious  topics.  He  was  an  earnest  believer. 
But  it  was  in  the  God  of  Battles  that  he  believed.  And  he  would 
be  delighted  at  any  time  to  prove  in  a  stand-up  fight  the  honesty 
of  his  convictions.  In  the  union  of  a  deep  religious  fervour  with 
an  overwhelming  love  of  fighting — sheer  physical  hand-to-hand 
fighting — he  was  an  interesting  study.  In  this  curious  blending 
of  what  appear  to  be  opposite  qualities  he  resembled  General 
Gordon,  who,  by  the  way,  was  a  cousin  of  Dr.  Gordon  Hake  at 
whose  place  I  met  Borrow, 

He  was  a  splendid  liar  too.  Not  in  the  ordinary  domestic 
meaning  of  the  word.  But  he  lied  largely,  picturesquely,  like 
Baron  Munchausen.  That  is  one  of  the  reasons  that  he  did  not 
take  to  the  literary  persons  whom  he  met  at  Hake's.  Perhaps  he 
was  afraid  that  some  of  them  would  steal  his  thunder,  or  perhaps 
he  had  a  contempt  for  their  serious  pose.  But  to  those  whom  he 
did  not  suspect  of  literary  leanings  he  lied  delightfully.  That  fine 
boys'  book.  The  Bible  in  Spain,  is,  I  should  say,  chiefly  lies.  I 
have  heard  him  reel  off  adventures  as  amazing  as  any  in  the 
Spanish  reminiscences,  related  as  having  happened  on  the  very 
Common  which  we  were  crossing.  Theodore  Watts,  who  first  met 
Borrow  at  Hake's,  appears  to  have  got  on  all  right  with  him. 
But  then  Watts  would  get  on  with  anybody.  Besides,  the  two 
men  had  a  common  topic  in  Romany  lore.  But  toward  the 
literary  man  in  general  his  attitude  was  pretty  much  that  of 
Carlyle.  He  was  contemptuous  towards  those  who  followed  his 
own  trade. 

At  one  moment  of  the  correspondence  we  obtain  an 
interesting  glimpse  of  a   great  man  of  science.     Mr. 


318    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Darwin  sent  the  following  inquiry  through  Dr.  Hooker, 
afterwards  Sir  Joseph  Hooker,  and  it  reached  Borrow 
through  his  friend  Thomas  Brightwell : 

Is  there  any  Dog  in  Spain  closely  like  our  English  Pointer,  in 
shape  and  size,  and  habits^ — namely  in  pointing,  backing,  and  not 
giving  tongue.  Might  I  be  permitted  to  quote  Mr.  Borrow's  answer 
to  the  query  ?  Has  the  improved  English  pointer  been  introduced 
into  Spain  ?  C.  Darwin. 


^j  Ikc^-t. 


/c^^^^mW  UtS^"  v^^^^Sl— *.        / 


C  -  •Ji'^i'run^t^ 


FACSIMILE  OF  A  COMMUNICATION  FROM  CHARLES  DARWIN 
TO  GEORGE  BORROW. 

Borrow  took  constant  holidays  during  these  Oulton 
days.  We  have  elsewhere  noted  his  holidays  in  Eastern 
Europe,  in  the  Isle  of  JNIan,  in  Wales,  and  in  Cornwall. 
Letters  from  other  parts  of  England  would  be  welcome, 


OULTON  BROAD  AND  YARMOUTH    319 

but  I  can  only  find  two,  and  these  are  but  scraps.     Both 
are  addressed  to  his  wife,  each  without  date : 


To  Mrs.  George  Borrow 

Oxford,  Feb.  2nd. 

Dear  Cauueta, — I  reached  this  place  yesterday  and  hope  to 
be  home  to-night  (Monday).  I  walked  the  whole  way  by  Kingston, 
Hampton,  Sunbury  (Miss  OriePs  place),  Windsor,  Wallingford, 
etc.,  a  good  part  of  the  way  was  by  the  Thames.  There  has  been 
much  wet  weather.  Oxford  is  a  wonderful  place.  Kiss  Hen.,  and 
God  bless  you  !  Geouge  Borrow. 


To  Mrs.  George  Borrow 

TuNBRiDGE  WellSj  Tucsdai/  evening. 

Dear  Carreta, — I  have  arrived  here  safe — it  is  a  wonderful 
place,  a  small  city  of  palaces  amidst  hills,  rocks,  and  woods,  and  is 
full  ^of  fine  people.  Please  to  carry  up  stairs  and  lock  in  the 
drawer  the  little  paper  sack  of  letters  in  the  parlour ;  lock  it  up 
with  the  bank  book  and  put  this  along  with  it — also  be  sure  to 
keep  the  window  of  my  room  fastened  and  the  door  locked,  and 
keep  the  key  in  your  pocket.     God  bless  you  and  Hen. 

George  Borrow. 

One  of  the  very  last  letters  of  Borrow  that  I  possess 
is  to  an  unknown  correspondent.  It  is  from  a  rough 
'  draft '  in  his  handwriting  : 

OuLTON,  Lowestoft,  May  1875. 

Sir, — Your  letter  of  the  eighth  of  March  I  only  lately  received, 
otherwise  I  should  have  answered  it  sooner.  In  it  you  mention 
Chamberlayne's  work,  containing  versions  of  the  Lord's  Prayer 
translated  into  a  hundred  languages,  and  ask  whether  I  can 
explain  why  the  one  which  purports  to  be  a  rendering  into 
Waldensian  is  evidently  made  in  some  dialect  of  the  Gaelic.  To 
such  explanation  as  I  can  afford  you  are  welcome,  though  perhaps 


320    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

you  will  not  deem  it  very  satisfactory.     I  have  been  acquainted 
with  Charaberlayne's  work  for  upwards  of  forty  years.     I  first  saw 
it  at  St.  Petersburg  in  1834,  and  the  translation  in  question  very 
soon  caught  my   attention.     I  at  first    thought  that  it  was  an 
attempt   at    imposition,    but    I    soon   relinquished    that  idea.     I 
remembered  that  Helvetia  was  a  great  place  for  Gaelic.     I  do  not 
mean  in  the  old  time  when  the  Gael  possessed  the  greater  part  of 
Europe,  but  at  a  long  subsequent  period  :  Switzerland  was  con- 
verted to  Christianity  by  Irish  monks,  the  most  active  and  efficient 
of  whom    was    Gall.      These    people    founded    schools   in    which 
together  with  Christianity  the  Irish  or  Gaelic  language  was  taught. 
In  process  of  time,  though  the  religion   flourished,  the  Helveto 
Gaelic  died  away,  but  many  pieces  in  that  tongue  survived,  some 
of  which  might  still  probably  be  found  in  the  recesses  of  St.  Gall. 
The    noble    abbey    is    named    after    the    venerable    apostle    of 
Christianity  in  Helvetia  ;  so  I  deemed  it  very  possible  that  the 
version  in  question  might  be  one  of  the  surviving  fruits  of  Irish 
missionary  labour  in  Helvetia,  not  but.  that  I  had  my  doubts,  and 
still  have,  principally  from  observing  that  the  language  though 
certainly  not  modern  does  not  exhibit  any  decided  marks  of  high 
antiquity.     It  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  Chamberlayne  should 
have  given  the  version  to  the  world  under  a  title  so  calculated  to 
perplex  and  mislead   as   that   which  it  bears,  and  without  even 
stating  how  or  where  he  obtained  it.     This,  sir,  is  all  I  have  to 
say  on  the  very  obscure  subject  about  which  you  have  done  me 
the  honour  to  consult  me. — Yours  truly, 

George  Borrow. 


CHAPTER    XXIX 

IN  SCOTLAND  AND  IRELAND 

Borrow  has  himself  given  us — in  Lavengro — a  pictur- 
esque record  of  his  early  experiences  in  Scotland.  It 
is  passing  strange  that  he  published  no  account  of  his 
two  visits  to  the  North  in  maturer  years.  Why  did 
he  not  write  Wild  Scotland  as  a  companion  volume  to 
Wild  Wales'^.  He  preserved  in  little  leather  pocket- 
books  or  leather-covered  exercise-books  copious  notes 
of  both  tours.  Two  of  his  notebooks  came  into  the 
possession  of  the  late  Dr.  Knapp,  Borrows  first 
biographer,  and  are  thus  described  in  his  Bibliography : 

Note  Book  of  a  Tour  in  Scotland^  the  Orkneys  and  Shetland  in 
Oct.  and  Dec.  1858.     1  large  vol.  leather. 

Note  Book  of  Tours  around  Belfast  and  the  Scottish  Borders 
from  Stranraer  to  Berzvick-upon-Tieeed  in  Julij  and  August  1866. 
I  vol.  leather. 

Of  these  Dr.  Knapp  made  use  only  to  give  the  routes 
of  Borrow's  journeys  so  far  as  he  was  able  to  interpret 
them.  It  may  be  that  he  was  doubtful  as  to  whether 
his  purchase  of  the  manuscript  carried  with  it  the 
copyright  of  its  contents,  as  it  assuredly  did  not;  it 
may  be  that  he  quailed  before  the  minute  and  almost 
undecipherable  handwriting.  But  similar  notebooks 
are  in  my  possession,  and  there  are,  happily,  in  these 

V  321 


322    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

days  typists — you  pay  them  by  the  hour,  and  it  means 
an  infinity  of  time  and  patience — who  will  copy  the 
most  minute  and  the  most  obscure  documents.  There 
are  some  of  the  notebooks  of  the  Scottish  tour  of  1858 
before  me,  and  what  is  of  far  more  importance — 
Borrow's  letters  to  his  wife  while  on  this  tour.  Borrow 
lost  his  mother  in  August  1858,  and  this  event  was 
naturally  a  great  blow  to  his  heart.  A  week  or  two 
later  he  suffered  a  cruel  blow  to  his  pride  also,  nothing 
less  than  the  return  of  the  manuscript  of  his  much- 
prized  translation  from  the  Welsh  of  The  Sleepifig 
Bard — and  this  by  his  'prince  of  publishers,'  John 
Murray.  '  There  is  no  money  in  it,'  said  the  publisher, 
and  he  was  doubtless  right.^  The  two  disasters  were 
of  different  character,  but  both  unhinged  him.  He 
had  already  written  Wild  Wales,  although  it  was  not 
to  be  published  for  another  four  years.  He  had  caused 
to  be  advertised — in  1857— a  book  on  Cornwall,  but 
it  was  never  written  in  any  definitive  form,  and  now 
our  author  had  lost  heart,  and  the  Cornish  book — 
Penquite  and  Pentyre — and  the  Scots  book  never  saw 
the  light.  In  these  autumn  months  of  1858  geniality 
and  humour  had  parted  from  Borrow ;  this  his  diary 
makes  clear.  He  was  ill.  His  wife  urged  a  tour  in 
Scotland,  and  he  prepared  himself  for  a  rough,  simple 
journey,  of  a  kind  quite  different  from  the  one  in 
Wales.  The  north  of  Scotland  in  the  winter  was 
scarcely  to  be  thought  of  for  his  wife  and  step- 
dausfhter  Henrietta.  He  tells  us  in  one  of  these 
diaries  that  he  walked  '  several  hundred  miles  in  the 
Highlands.'     His  wife  and  daughter  were  with  him  in 

1  Borrow  had  The  Sleeping  Bard  printed  at  his  own  expense  in  Great 
Yai'mouth  in  18(50,  Mr.  Murray  giving  his  imprint  on  the  title-page.  See 
Chapter  xxxv.  p.  404. 


IN  SCOTLAND  AND  IRELAND         323 

Wales,  as  every  reader  of  Wild  Wales  will  recall,  but 
the  Scots  tour  was  meant  to  be  a  more  formidable 
pilgrimage,  and  they  went  to  Great  Yarmouth  instead. 
The  first  half  of  the  tour— that  of  September— is  dealt 
with  in  letters  to  his  wife,  the  latter  half  is  reflected  in 
his  diary.  The  letters  show  Sorrow's  experiences  in 
the  earlier  part  of  his  journey,  and  from  his  diaries  we 
learn  that  he  was  in  Oban  on  22nd  October,  Aberdeen 
on  5th  November,  Inverness  on  the  9th,  and  thence  he 
went  to  Tain,  Dornoch,  Wick,  John  o'  Groat's,  and  to 
the  island  towns,  Stromness,  Kirkwall,  and  Lerwick. 
He  was  in  Shetland  on  the  1st  of  December — alto- 
gether a  bleak,  cheerless  journey,  we  may  believe,  even 
for  so  hardy  a  tramp  as  Borrow,  and  the  tone  of  the 
following  extract  from  one  of  his  rough  notebooks 
in  my  possession  may  perhaps  be  explained  by  the 
circumstance.  Borrow  is  on  the  way  to  Loch  Laggan 
and  visits  a  desolate  churchyard.  Coll  Harrie,  to  see 
the  tomb  of  John  Macdonnel  or  Ian  Lorn  : 

I  was  on  a  Highland  hill  in  an  old  Popish  burying-ground.  I 
entered  the  ruined  church,  disturbed  a  rabbit  crouching  under  an 
old  tombstone — it  ran  into  a  hole,  then  came  out  running  about 
like  wild — quite  frightened — made  room  for  it  to  run  out  by  the 
doorway,  telling  it  I  would  not  hurt  it — went  out  again  and 
examined  the  tombs.  .  .  .  Would  have  examined  much  more  but 
the  wind  and  rain  blew  horribly,  and  I  was  afraid  that  my  hat, 
if  not  my  head,  would  be  blown  into  the  road  over  the  hill. 
Quitted  the  place  of  old  Highland  Popish  devotion — descended 
the  hill  again  with  great  difficulty — grass  slippery  and  the  ground 
here  and  there  quaggy,  resumed  the  road — village — went  to  the 
door  of  house  looking  down  the  valley — to  ask  its  name — knock — 
people  came  out,  a  whole  family,  looking  sullen  and  all  savage. 
The  stout,  tall  young  man  with  the  grey  savage  eyes — civil  ques- 
tions—  half-savage  answers  —  village's  name  Achaluarach — the 
neighbourhood — all  Catholic — chiefly  Macdonnels ;  said  the  Eng- 


824    GEORGE  BORKOW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

lish,  my  count7"ymeii,  had  taken  the  whole  country — '  but  not 
without  paying  for  it,'  I  replied — said  I  was  soaking  wet  with  a 
kind  of  sneer,  but  never  asked  me  in.  I  said  I  cared  not  for  wet. 
A  savage,  brutal  Papist  and  a  hater  of  the  English — the  whole 
family  with  bad  countenances — a  tall  woman  in  the  background 
probably  the  mother  of  them  all.  Bade  him  good-day,  he  made 
no  answer  and  I  went  away.  Learnt  that  the  river"'s  name  was 
Spean. 

He  passed  through  Scotland  in  a  dispiitative  vein,  which 
could  not  have  made  him  a  popular  traveller.  He  tells 
a  Roman  Catholic  of  the  Macdonnel  clan  to  read  his 
Bible  and  '  trust  in  Christ,  not  in  the  Virgin  Mary  and 
graven  images.'  He  went  up  to  another  man  who 
accosted  him  with  the  remark  that  '  It  is  a  soft  day,' 
and  said,  *  You  should  not  say  a  "  soft "  day,  but  a  wet 
day.'  Even  the  Spanish,  for  whom  he  had  so  much 
contempt  and  scorn  when  he  returned  from  the 
Peninsula,  are  'in  many  things  a  wise  people '—after 
his  experiences  of  the  Scots.  There  is  abundance  of 
Borrow's  prejudice,  intolerance,  and  charm  in  this 
fragment  of  a  diary  ^ ;  but  the  extract  I  have  given  is 
of  additional  interest  as  showing  how  Borrow  wrote  all 
his  books.  The  notebooks  that  he  wrote  in  Spain  and 
Wales  were  made  up  of  similar  disjointed  jottings. 
Here  is  a  note  of  more  human  character  interspersed 
with  Borrow's  diatribes  upon  the  surliness  of  the 
Scots.  He  is  at  Invergarry,  on  the  Banks  of  Loch 
Oich.     It  is  the  5th  of  October : 

Dinner  of  real  haggis ;  meet  a  conceited  schoolmaster.  This 
night,  or  rather  in  the  early  morning,  I  saw  in  the  dream  of  my 
sleep  my  dear  departed  mother — she  appeared  to  be  coming  out 
of  her  little  sleeping-room  at  Oulton  Hall — overjoyed  I  gave  a 

^  Which  will  be  published  in  my  edition  of  Borrow's  Collected  Works. 


IN  SCOTT.AND  AND  TRET.AND        325 

cry  and  fell  down  at  her  knee,  but  my  agitation  was  so  great  that 
it  burst  the  bonds  of  sleep,  and  I  awoke. 

But  the  letters  to  Mrs.  Borrow  are  the  essential  docu- 
ments here,  and  not  the  copious  diaries  which  I  hope 
to  publish  elsewhere.  The  first  letter  to  '  Carreta '  is 
from  Edinburgh,  where  Borrow  arrived  on  Sunday, 
19th  September  1858  : 


To  Mrs.  George  Borrow,  38  Camperdown  Place, 
Yarmouth,  Norfolk 

Edinburgh,  Sunday  (Sept.  Idtli,  1858). 

Dear  Carreta, — I  just  write  a  line  to  inform  you  that  I  arrived 
here  yesterday  quite  safe.  We  did  not  start  from  Yarmouth  till 
past  three  o'clock  on  Thursday  morning ;  we  reached  Newcastle 
about  ten  on  Friday.  As  I  was  walking  in  the  street  at  Newcastle 
a  sailor-like  man  came  running  up  to  me,  and  begged  that  I 
would  let  him  speak  to  me.  He  appeared  almost  wild  with  joy. 
I  asked  him  who  he  was,  and  he  told  me  he  was  a  Yarmouth 
north  beach  man,  and  that  he  knew  me  very  well.  Before  I  could 
answer,  another  sailor-like,  short,  thick  fellow  came  running  up, 
who  also  seemed  wild  with  joy  ;  he  was  a  comrade  of  the  other.  I 
never  saw  two  people  so  out  of  themselves  with  pleasure,  they 
literally  danced  in  the  street ;  in  fact,  they  were  two  of  my  old 
friends.  I  asked  them  how  they  came  down  there,  and  they  told 
me  that  they  had  been  down  fishing.  They  begged  a  thousand 
pardons  for  speaking  to  me,  but  told  me  they  could  not  help  it. 
I  set  off  for  Alnwick  on  Friday  afternoon,  stayed  there  all  night, 
and  saw  the  castle  next  morning.  It  is  a  fine  old  place,  but  at 
present  is  undergoing  repairs — a  Scottish  king  was  killed  before 
its  walls  in  the  old  time.  At  about  twelve  I  started  for  Edin- 
burgh. The  place  is  wonderfully  altered  since  I  was  here,  and  I 
don't  think  for  the  better.  There  is  a  Runic  stone  on  the  castle 
brae  which  I  am  going  to  copy.  It  was  not  there  in  my  time. 
If  you  write  direct  to  me  at  the  Post  Office,  Inverness.  I  am 
thinking  of  going  to  Glasgow  to-morrow,  from  which  place  I  shall 


326    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

start  for  Inverness  by  one  of  the  packets  which  go  thither  by  the 
North-West  and  the  Caledonian  Canal.  I  hope  that  you  and 
Hen  are  well  and  comfortable.  Pray  eat  plenty  of  grapes  and 
partridges.  We  had  upon  the  whole  a  pleasant  passage  from 
Yarmouth  ;  we  lived  plainly  but  well,  and  I  was  not  at  all  ill — 
the  captain  seemed  a  kind,  honest  creature.  Remember  me  kindly 
to  Mrs.  Turnour  and  Mrs.  Clarke,  and  God  bless  you  and  Hen. 

George  Borrow. 

In  his  unpublished  diary  Borrow  records  his  journey 
from  Glasgow  through  beautiful  but  over-described 
scenery  to  Inverness,  where  he  stayed  at  the  Caledonian 
Hotel : 


To  Mrs.  George  Borrow,  38  Camperdown  Place, 

Yarmouth 

Inverness,  Sunday  (Sept.  2(ith). 

Dear  Carreta, — This  is  the  third  letter  which  I  have  written 
to  you.  AVhether  you  have  received  the  other  two,  or  will  receive 
this,  I  am  doubtful.  I  have  been  several  times  to  the  post  office, 
but  we  found  no  letter  from  you,  though  I  expected  to  find  one 
awaiting  me  when  I  arrived.  I  wrote  last  on  Friday.  I  merely 
want  to  know  once  how  you  are,  and  if  all  is  well  I  shall  move 
onward.  It  is  of  not  much  use  staying  here.  After  I  had  written 
to  you  on  Friday  I  crossed  by  the  ferry  over  the  Firth  and  walked 
to  Beauly,  and  from  thence  to  Beaufort  or  Castle  Downie  ;  at  Beauly 
I  saw  the  gate  of  the  pit  where  old  Fraser  used  to  put  the  people 
whom  he  owed  money  to — it  is  in  the  old  ruined  cathedral,  and 
at  Beaufort  saw  the  ruins  of  the  house  where  he  was  born.  Lord 
Lovat  lives  in  the  house  close  by.  There  is  now  a  claimant  to 
the  title,  a  descendant  of  old  Fraser's  elder  brother  who  committed 
a  murder  in  the  year  1690,  and  on  that  account  fled  to  South 
Wales.  The  present  family  are  rather  uneasy,  and  so  are  their 
friends,  of  whom  they  have  a  great  number,  for  though  they  are 
flaming  Papists  they  are  very  free  of  their  money.  I  have  told 
several  of  their  cousins  that  the  claimant  has  not  a  chance  as  the 
present  family  have  been  so  long  in   possession.      They  almost 


IN  SCOTLAND  AND  IRELAND         327 

blessed  mc  for  saying  so.  There,  however,  can  be  very  little  doubt 
that  the  title  and  estate,  more  than  a  million  acres,  belong  to  the 
claimant  by  strict  law.  Old  Eraser's  brother  was  called  Black 
John  of  the  Tasser.  The  man  whom  he  killed  was  a  piper  who 
sang  an  insulting  song  to  him  at  a  wedding.  I  have  heard  the 
words  and  have  translated  them  ;  he  was  dressed  very  finely,  and 
the  piper  sang : 

*  You're  dressed  in  Higlilaud  robes^  O  John, 
But  ropes  of  straw  would  become  ye  better  ; 
You  've  silver  buckles  your  shoes  upon 
But  leather  thongs  for  them  were  fitter.' 

Whereupon  John  drew  his  dagger  and  ran  it  into  the  piper's 
belly;  the  descendants  of  the  piper  are  still  living  at  Beauly.  I 
walked  that  day  thirty-four  miles  between  noon  and  ten  o'clock 
at  night.  My  letter  of  credit  is  here.  This  is  a  dear  place,  but 
not  so  bad  as  Edinburgh.  If  you  have  written,  don't  write  any 
more  till  you  hear  from  me  again.     God  bless  you  and  Hen. 

George  Boiuiow. 

'  Swindled  out  of  a  shilling  by  rascally  ferryman,'  is 
Borrow  s  note  in  his  diary  of  the  episode  that  he  relates 
to  his  wife  of  crossing  the  Firth.  He  does  not  tell  her, 
but  his  diary  tells  us,  that  he  changed  his  inn  on  the 
day  he  wrote  this  letter :  the  following  jottings  from 
the  diary  cover  the  period  : 

Sept.  9,9th. — Quit  the  '  Caledonian  '  for  '  Union  Sun ' — poor 
accommodation — could  scarcely  get  anything  to  eat — unpleasant 
day.  Walked  by  the  river — at  night  saw  the  comet  again  from 
the  bridge. 

Sept.  SOth. — Breakfast.  The  stout  gentleman  from  Caithness, 
Mr.  John  Miller,  gave  me  his  card — show  him  mine — his  delight. 

Oct.  1st. — Left  Inverness  for  Fort  Augustus  by  steamer — 
passengers — strange  man — tall  gentleman — half  doctor — breakfast 
— dreadful  hurricane  of  wind  and  rain — reach  Fort  Augustus — 
inn — apartments — Edinburgh  ale — stroll  over  the  bridge  to  a 
wretched  village — wind  and  rain — return — fall  asleep  before 
fire — dinner — herrings,  first-rate — black  ale.  Highland  mutton — 


328    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

pudding  and  cream — stroll  round  the  fort — wet  grass — stormy- 
like — wind  and  rain — return — kitchen — kind,  intelligent  woman 
from  Dornoch — no  Gaelic — shows  me  a  Gaelic  book  of  spiritual 
songs  by  one  Robertson — talks  to  me  about  Alexander  Gumming, 
a  fat  blacksmith  and  great  singer  of  Gaelic  songs. 

But  to  return  to  Borrow's  letters  to  his  wife : 


To  Mrs.  George  Borrow,  38  Camperdown  Terrace, 

Gt.  Yarmouth 

Inverness,  September  2Qth,  1858. 

My  dear  Caereta, — I  have  got  your  letter,  and  glad  enough 
I  was  to  get  it.  The  day  after  to-morrow  I  shall  depart  from 
here  for  Fort  Augustus  at  some  distance  up  the  lake.  After 
staying  a  few  days  there,  I  am  thinking  of  going  to  the  Isle  of 
Mull,  but  I  will  write  to  you  if  possible  from  Fort  Augustus.  I 
am  rather  sorry  that  I  came  to  Scotland — I  was  never  in  such  a 
place  in  my  life  for  cheating  and  imposition,  and  the  farther  north 
you  go  the  worse  things  seem  to  be,  and  yet  I  believe  it  is  possible 
to  live  very  cheap  here,  that  is  if  you  have  a  house  of  your  own 
and  a  wife  to  go  out  and  make  bargains,  for  things  are  abundant 
enough,  but  if  you  move  about  you  are  at  the  mercy  of  innkeepers 
and  suchlike  people.  The  other  day  I  was  swindled  out  of  a 
shilling  by  a  villain  to  whom  I  had  given  it  for  change.  I  ought, 
perhaps,  to  have  had  him  up  before  a  magistrate  provided  I  could 
have  found  one,  but  I  was  in  a  wild  place  and  he  had  a  clan  about 
him,  and  if  I  had  had  him  up  I  have  no  doubt  I  should  have  been 
outsworn.  I,  however,  have  met  one  fine,  noble  old  fellow.  The 
other  night  I  lost  my  way  amongst  horrible  moors  and  wan- 
dered for  miles  and  miles  without  seeing  a  soul.  At  last  I  saw  a 
light  which  came  from  the  window  of  a  rude  hovel.  I  tapped  at 
the  window  and  shouted,  and  at  last  an  old  man  came  out;  he 
asked  me  what  I  wanted,  and  I  told  him  I  had  lost  my  way. 
He  asked  me  where  I  came  from  and  where  I  wanted  to  go,  and 
on  my  telling  him  he  said  I  had  indeed  lost  my  way,  for  I  had 
got  out  of  it  at  least  four  miles,  and  was  going  away  from  the 
place  I  wanted  to  get  to.     He  then  said  he  would  show  me  the 


IN  SCOTLAND  AND   IRELAND         329 

way,  and  went  with  me  for  several  miles  over  most  horrible  places. 
At  last  we  came  to  a  road  where  he  said  he  thouo;ht  he  might 
leave  me,  and  wished  me  good-night.  I  gave  him  a  shilling.  He 
was  very  grateful  and  said,  after  considering,  that  as  I  had  be- 
haved so  handsomely  to  him  he  would  not  leave  me  yet,  as  he 
thought  it  possible  I  might  yet  lose  my  way.  He  then  went  with 
me  three  miles  farther,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that,  but  for  him,  I 
should  have  lost  my  way  again,  the  roads  were  so  tangled.  I  never 
saw  such  an  old  fellow,  or  one  whose  conversation  was  so  odd  and 
entertaining.  This  happened  last  Monday  night,  the  night  of  the 
day  in  which  I  had  been  swindled  of  the  shilling  by  the  other ;  I 
could  write  a  history  about  those  two  shillings. 


To  Mrs.  George  Borrow,  39  Camperdown  Terrace, 

Gt.  Yarmouth 

Inverness,  30th  September  1858. 
Dear  Carreta, — I  write  another  line  to  tell  you  that  I  have 
got  your  second  letter — it  came  just  in  time,  as  I  leave  to-morrow. 
In  your  next,  address  to  George  Borrow,  Post  Office,  Tobermory, 
Isle  of  Mull,  Scotland.  You  had,  however,  better  write  without 
delay,  as  I  don  ""t  know  how  long  I  may  be  there ;  and  be  sure  only 
to  write  once.  I  am  glad  we  have  got  such  a  desirable  tenant  for 
our  Maltings,  and  should  be  happy  to  hear  that  the  cottage  was 
also  let  so  well.  However,  let  us  be  grateful  for  what  has  been 
accomplished.  I  hope  you  wrote  to  Cooke  as  I  desired  you,  and 
likewise  said  something  about  how  I  had  waited  for  Murray.  .  .  . 
I  met  to-day  a  very  fat  gentleman  from  Caithness,  at  the  very 
north  of  Scotland ;  he  said  he  was  descended  from  the  Norse.  I 
talked  to  him  about  them,  and  he  was  so  pleased  with  my  conver- 
sation that  he  gave  me  his  card,  and  begged  that  I  would  visit 
him  if  I  went  there.  As  I  could  do  no  less,  I  showed  him  my 
card — I  had  but  one — and  he  no  sooner  saw  the  name  than  he 
was  in  a  rapture.  I  am  rather  glad  that  you  have  got  the  next 
door,  as  the  locality  is  highly  respectable.  Tell  Hen  that  I  copied 
the  Runic  stone  on  the  Castle  Hill,  Edinburgh.  It  was  brought 
from  Denmark  in  the  old  time.     The  inscription  is  imperfect,  but 


330    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

I  can  read  enough  of  it  to  see  that  it  was  erected  by  a  man  to  his 
father  and  mother.  I  again  write  the  direction  for  your  next : 
George  (Borrow,  Esq.,  Post  Office,  Tobermory,  Isle  of  Mull, 
Scotland.     God  bless  you  and  Hen.     Ever  yours, 

George  Borrow. 


To  Mrs.  George  Borrow,  39  Camperdown  Terrace, 

Gt.  Yarmouth 

FoBT  Augustus,  Sunday,  October  7th,  1868. 

Dear  Carreta, — I  write  a  line  lest  you  should  be  uneasy. 
Before  leaving  the  Highlands  I  thought  I  would  see  a  little  more 
about  me.  So  last  week  I  set  on  a  four  days'  task,  a  walk  of  a 
hundred  miles.  I  returned  here  late  last  Thursday  night.  I  walked 
that  day  forty-five  miles ;  during  the  first  twenty  the  rain  poured 
in  torrents  and  the  wind  blew  in  my  face.  The  last  seventeen 
miles  were  in  the  dark.  To-morrow  I  proceed  towards  Mull.  I 
hope  that  you  got  my  letters,  and  that  I  shall  find  something  from 
you  awaiting  me  at  the  post  office.  The  first  day  I  passed  over 
Corryarrick,  a  mountain  3000  feet  high.  I  was  nearly  up  to  my 
middle  in  snow.  As  soon  as  I  had  passed  it  I  was  in  Badenoch. 
The  road  on  the  farther  side  was  horrible,  and  I  was  obliged  to 
wade  several  rivulets,  one  of  which  was  very  boisterous  and  nearly 
threw  me  down.^  I  wandered  through  a  wonderful  country,  and 
picked  up  a  great  many  strange  legends  from  the  people  I  met, 
but  they  were  very  few,  the  country  being  almost  a  desert,  chiefly 
inhabited  by  deer.  When  amidst  the  lower  mountains  I  frequently 
heard  them  blaring  in  the  woods  above  me.  The  people  at  the 
inn  here  are  by  far  the  nicest  I  have  met ;  they  are  kind  and 
honourable  to  a  degree.     God  bless  you  and  Hen. 

George  Borrow. 


1  Mr.  James  Barron  of  The  Inverness  Courier  informs  me  that  Borrow 
took  a  well-known  route  between  Fort  Augustus  and  Badenoch,  although 
nowadays  it  is  rarely  used,  as  Wade's  Road  has  been  abandoned  ;  it  is 
very  dilapidated.     It  was  not  quite  so  bad,  he  says,  in  1868. 


IN  SCOTLAND  AND  IRELAND        331 

To  JNIrs.  George  Borrow,  39  Camperdown  Terrace, 

Yarmouth 

(Fragment?  undated.) 
On  Tuesday  I  am  going  through  the  wliole  of  it  to  Icolmkill — 
I  should  start  to-morrow — but  I  must  get  my  shoes  new  soles,  for 
they  have  been  torn  to  pieces  by  the  roads,  and  likewise  some  of 
my  things  mended,  for  they  are  in  a  sad  condition. 

I  shall  return  from  Thurso  to  Inverness,  as  I  shall  want  some 
more  money  to  bring  me  home.  So  pray  do  not  let  the  credit  be 
withdrawn.  What  a  blessing  it  is  to  have  money,  but  how  cautious 
people  ought  to  be  not  to  waste  it.  Pray  remember  me  most 
kindly  to  our  good  friend  Mr.  Hills.  Send  the  Harveys  the 
pheasant  as  usual  with  my  kind  regards.  I  think  you  should 
write  to  Mr.  Dalton  of  Bury  telling  him  that  I  have  been  unwell, 
and  that  I  send  my  kind  regards  and  respects  to  him.  I  send 
dear  Hen  a  paper  in  company  with  this,  in  which  I  have  enclosed 
specimens  of  the  heather,  the  moss  and  the  fern,  or  '  raineach,'  of 
Mull. — God  bless  you  both,  George  Borrow. 

Do  not  delay  in  sending  the  order. 
Write  at  the  same  time  telling  me 
how  you  are. 

To  Mrs.  George  Borrow,  39  Camperdown  Terrace, 
Yarmouth,  Norfolk 

Inverness,  Nov.  7tli,  1858. 
Dear  Carreta, — After  I  wrote  to  you  I  walked  round  Mull 
and  through  it,  over  Benmore.  I  likewise  went  to  Icolmkill,  and 
passed  twenty-four  hours  there.  I  saw  the  wonderful  ruin  and 
crossed  the  island.  I  suffered  a  great  deal  from  hunger,  but 
what  I  saw  amply  repaid  me ;  on  my  return  to  Tobermory  I  was 
rather  unwell,  but  got  better.  I  was  disappointed  in  a  passage  to 
Thurso  by  sea,  so  I  was  obliged  to  return  to  this  place  by  train. ^ 

^  Mr.  Barron  points  out  to  me  that  as  there  was  no  direct  railway  com- 
munication Borrow  must  have  gone  to  Aberdeen  or  Huntly,  and  returned 
from  the  latter  town  to  Inverness.  He  must  have  taken  a  steamer  from 
Tobermory  to  Fort  William,  and  thence  probably  walked  by  Glen  Speau  and 
Laggan  to  Kingussie.  After  that  he  must  have  traversed  one  of  the  passes 
leading  by  Ben  Macdhui  or  the  Cairngorms  to  Aberdeenshire. 


332    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

On  Tuesday,  D.V.,  I  shall  set  out  on  foot,  and  hope  to  find  your 
letter  awaiting  me  at  the  post  office  at  Thurso.  On  coming 
hither  by  train  I  nearly  lost  my  things.  I  was  told  at  Huntly 
that  the  train  stopped  ten  minutes,  and  meanwhile  the  train  drove 
off  purposely  \  I  telegraphed  to  Keith  in  order  that  my  things 
might  be  secured,  describing  where  they  were,  under  the  seat. 
The  reply  was  that  there  was  nothing  of  the  kind  there.  I 
instantly  said  that  I  would  bring  an  action  against  the  company, 
and  walked  off  to  the  town,  where  I  stated  the  facts  to  a  magis- 
trate, and  gave  him  my  name  and  address.  He  advised  me  to 
bring  my  action.  I  went  back  and  found  the  people  frightened. 
They  telegraphed  again — and  the  reply  was  that  the  things  were 
safe.  There  is  nothing  like  setting  oneself  up  sometimes.  I  was 
terribly  afraid  I  should  never  again  find  my  books  and  things.  I, 
however,  got  them,  and  my  old  umbrella,  too.  I  was  sent  on  by 
the  mail  train,  but  lost  four  hours,  besides  undergoing  a  great 
deal  of  misery  and  excitement.  When  I  have  been  to  Thurso  and 
Kirkwall  I  shall  return  as  quick  as  possible,  and  shall  be  glad  to 
get  out  of  the  country.  As  I  am  here,  however,  I  wish  to  see  all 
I  can,  for  I  never  wish  to  return.  Whilst  in  Mull  I  lived  very 
cheaply — it  is  not  costing  me  more  than  seven  shillings  a  day. 
The  generality  of  the  inns,  however,  in  the  lowlands  are  incredibly 
dear — half-a-crown  for  breakfast,  consisting  of  a  little  tea,  a 
couple  of  small  eggs,  and  bread  and  butter — heo  shillings  for 
attendance.  Tell  Hen  that  I  have  some  moss  for  her  from  Ben- 
more — also  some  seaweed  from  the  farther  shore  of  Icolmkill. 
God  bless  you.  George  Borrow. 

I  do  not  possess  any  diaries  or  notebooks  covering 
the  period  of  the  following  letters.  The  diary  which 
covers  this  period  is  mentioned  in  the  bibhography 
attached  to  Dr.  Knapp's  Life  of  Borr^ow,  which,  with 
the  rest  of  Dr.  Knapp's  Borrow  papers,  is  now  in  the 
possession  of  the  Hispanic  Society,  New  York. 

Thurso,  2lst  Nov.  1858. 
My   dear  Cakreta, — I  reached  this   place  on  Friday  night, 
and  was  glad  enough  to  get  your  kind  letter.     I  shall  be  so  glad  to 


IN  SCOTLAND  AND  IRELAND         333 

get  home  to  you.  Since  my  last  letter  to  you  I  have  walked  nearly 
160  miles.  I  was  terribly  taken  in  with  respect  to  distances — 
however,  1  managed  to  make  my  way.  I  have  been  to  Johnny 
Groat's  House,  which  is  about  twenty-two  miles  from  this  place. 
I  had  tolerably  fine  weather  all  the  way,  but  within  two  or  three 
miles  of  that  place  a  terrible  storm  arose ;  the  next  day  the 
country  was  covered  with  ice  and  snow.  There  is  at  present  here 
a  kind  of  Greenland  winter,  colder  almost  than  I  ever  knew  the 
winter  in  Russia.  The  streets  are  so  covered  with  ice  that  it  is 
dangerous  to  step  out ;  to-morrow  D.  and  I  pass  over  into  Orkney, 
and  we  shall  take  the  first  steamer  to  Aberdeen  and  Inverness, 
from  whence  I  shall  make  the  best  of  my  way  to  England.  It  is 
well  that  I  have  no  farther  to  walk,  for  walking  now  is  almost  im- 
possible— the  last  twenty  miles  were  terrible,  and  the  weather  is 
worse  now  than  it  was  then.  I  was  terribly  deceived  with  respect 
to  steamboats.  I  was  told  that  one  passed  over  to  Orkney  every 
day,  and  I  have  now  been  waiting  two  days,  and  there  is  not  yet 
one.  I  have  had  quite  enough  of  Scotland.  When  I  was  at 
Johnny  Groafs  I  got  a  shell  for  dear  Hen,  which  I  hope  I  shall  be 
able  to  bring  or  send  to  her.  I  am  glad  to  hear  that  you  have 
got  out  the  money  on  mortgage  so  satisfactorily.  One  of  the 
greatest  blessings  in  this  world  is  to  be  independent.  My  spirits 
of  late  have  been  rather  bad,  owing  principally  to  my  dear  mother''s 
death.  I  always  knew  that  we  should  miss  her.  I  dreamt  about 
her  at  Fort  Augustus.  Though  I  have  walked  so  much  I  have 
suffered  very  little  from  fatigue,  and  have  got  over  the  ground  with 
surprising  facility,  but  I  have  not  enjoyed  the  country  so  much  as 
Wales.  I  wish  that  you  would  order  a  hat  for  me  against  I  come 
home  ;  the  one  I  am  wearing  is  very  shabby,  having  been  so  fre- 
quently drenched  with  rain  and  storm-beaten.  I  cannot  say  the 
exact  day  that  I  shall  be  home,  but  you  may  be  expecting  me. 
The  worst  is  that  there  is  no  depending  on  the  steamers,  for  there 
is  scarcely  any  traffic  in  Scotland  in  winter.  My  appetite  of  late 
has  been  very  poorly,  chiefly,  I  believe,  owing  to  badness  of  food 
and  want  of  regular  meals.  Glad  enough,  I  repeat,  shall  I  be  to 
get  home  to  you  and  Hen.  George  Borrow. 

Kirkwall,  Orkney,  November  27th,  1858.     Saturday. 
Dear  Cariieta, — I  am,  as  you  see,  in  Orkney,  and  I  expect 


334    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

every  minute  the  steamer  which  will  take  me  to  Shetland  and 
Aberdeen,  from  which  last  place  I  go  by  train  to  Inverness,  where 
my  things  are,  and  thence  home.  I  had  a  stormy  passage  to 
Stromness,  from  whence  I  took  a  boat  to  the  Isle  of  Hoy,  where  I 
saw  the  wonderful  Dwarfs  House  hollowed  out  of  the  stone. 
From  Stromness  I  walked  here.  I  have  seen  the  old  Norwegian 
Cathedral ;  it  is  of  red  sandstone,  and  looks  as  if  cut  out  of  rock. 
It  is  different  from  almost  everything  of  the  kind  I  ever  saw.  It 
is  stern  and  grand  to  a  degree.  I  have  also  seen  the  ruins  of  the 
old  Norwegian  Bishop's  palace  in  which  King  Hacon  died  ;  also 
the  ruins  of  the  palace  of  Patrick,  Earl  of  Orkney.  I  have  been 
treated  here  with  every  kindness  and  civility.  As  soon  as  the 
people  knew  who  I  was  they  could  scarcely  make  enough  of  me. 
The  Sheriff",  Mr.  Robertson,  a  great  Gaelic  scholar,  said  he  was 
proud  to  see  me  in  his  house ;  and  a  young  gentleman  of  the  name 
of  Petrie,  Clerk  of  Supply,  has  done  nothing  but  go  about  with 
me  to  show  me  the  wonders  of  the  place.  Mr.  Robertson  wished  to 
give  me  letters  to  some  gentleman  at  Edinburgh.  I,  however, 
begged  leave  to  be  excused,  saying  that  I  wished  to  get  home,  as, 
indeed,  I  do,  for  my  mind  is  wearied  by  seeing  so  many  strange 
places.  On  my  way  to  Kirkwall  I  saw  the  stones  of  Stennis — 
immense  blocks  of  stone  standing  up  like  those  of  Salisbury  Plain. 
All  the  country  is  full  of  Druidical  and  Pictish  remains.  It  is, 
however,  very  barren,  and  scarcely  a  tree  is  to  be  seen,  only  a  few 
dwarf  ones.  Orkney  consists  of  a  multitude  of  small  islands,  the 
principal  of  which  is  Pomona,  in  which  Kirkwall  is.  The  currents 
between  them  are  terrible.  I  hope  to  be  home  a  few  days  after 
you  receive  these  lines,  either  by  rail  or  steamer.  This  is  a  fine 
day,  but  there  has  been  dreadful  weather  here.  I  hope  we  shall 
have  a  prosperous  passage.  I  have  purchased  a  little  Kirkwall 
newspaper,  which  I  send  you  with  this  letter.  I  shall  perhaps 
post  both  at  Lerwick  or  Aberdeen.  I  sent  you  a  Johnny  Groafs 
newspaper,  which  I  hope  you  got.  Don't  tear  either  up,  for  they 
are  curious.     God  bless  you  and  Hen.  George  Borrow. 


Stirling,  Dec.  l-ith,  1858. 

Dear  Carreta, — I  write  a  line  to  tell  you  that  I  am  well  and 
that  I  am  on  my  way  to  England,  but  I  am  stopped  here  for  a  day. 


IN  SCOTLAND  AND  IRELAND         335 

for  there  is  no  conveyance.  Wherever  I  can  walk  I  get  on  very 
well — but  if  you  depend  on  coaches  or  any  means  of  conveyance  in 
this  country  you  are  sure  to  be  disappointed.  Tiiis  place  is  but 
thirty-five  miles  from  Edinburgh,  yet  I  am  detained  for  a  day — 
there  is  no  train.  The  waste  of  that  day  will  prevent  me  getting 
to  Yarmouth  from  Hull  by  the  steamer.  Were  it  not  for  my 
baggage  I  would  walk  to  Edinburgh.  I  got  to  Aberdeen,  where 
I  posted  a  letter  for  you.  I  was  then  obliged  to  return  to  Inver- 
ness for  my  luggage — 125  miles.  Rather  than  return  again  to 
Aberdeen,  I  sent  on  my  things  to  Dunkeld  and  walked  the  102 
miles  through  the  Highlands.  When  I  got  here  I  walked  to  Loch 
I>omond  and  Loch  Katrine,  thirty-eight  miles  over  horrible  roads. 
I  then  got  back  here.  I  have  now  seen  the  whole  of  Scotland  that 
is  worth  seeing,  and  have  walked  600  miles.  I  shall  be  glad  to  be 
out  of  the  country  ;  a  person  here  must  depend  entirely  upon  him- 
self and  his  own  legs.  I  have  not  spent  much  money — my  expenses 
during  my  wanderings  averaged  a  shilling  a  day.  As  I  was  walk- 
ing through  Strathspey,  singularly  enough  I  met  two  or  three  of 
the  Phillips.  I  did  not  know  them,  but  a  child  came  running 
after  me  to  ask  me  my  name.  It  was  Miss  P.  and  two  of  the 
children.  I  hope  to  get  to  you  in  two  or  three  days  after  you  get 
this.     God  bless  you  and  dear  Hen.  George  Borrow. 

Ill  spite  of  Borrovv's  vow  never  to  visit  Scotland 
again,  he  was  there  eight  years  later — in  1866 — but 
only  in  the  lowlands.  His  stepdaughter,  Hen.,  or 
Henrietta  Clarke,  had  married  Dr.  MacOubrey,  of  Bel- 
fast, and  Borrow  and  his  wife  went  on  a  visit  to  the 
pair.  But  the  incorrigible  vagabond  in  Borrow  was 
forced  to  declare  itself,  and  leaving  his  wife  and  daughter 
in  Belfast  he  crossed  to  Stranraer  by  steamer  on 
17th  July  1866,  and  tramped  through  the  lowlands, 
visiting  Ecclefechan  and  Gretna  Green.  We  have  no 
record  of  his  experiences  at  these  places.  The  only 
literary  impression  of  the  Scots  tour  of  1866,  apart 
from  a  brief  reference  in  Dr.  Knapp's  Life,  is  an  essay  on 
Kirk  Yetholm  in  Romano  Lavo-Lil.     We  would  gladly 


336    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

have  exchanged  it  for  an  account  of  his  visits  to  Abbots- 
ford  and  Mehose,  two  places  which  he  saw  in  August 
of  this  year. 

In  his  letter  of  27th  November  from  Kirkwall  it  will 
be  seen  that  Borrow  records  the  kindness  received  from 
'  a  young  gentleman  of  the  name  of  Petrie.'  It  is  plea- 
sant to  find  that  when  he  returned  to  England  he  did 
not  forget  that  kindness,  as  the  next  letter  demonstrates : 

To  George  Petrie,  Esq.,  Kirkwall 

39  Camperdown  PlacEj  Yarmouth,  Jany.  14,  1859. 

My  dear  Sir, — Some  weeks  ago  I  wrote  to  Mr.  Murray  (and) 
requested  him  to  transmit  to  you  two  works  of  mine.  Should  you 
not  have  received  them  by  the  time  this  note  reaches  you,  pray 
inform  me  and  I  will  write  to  him  again.  They  may  have  come 
already,  but  whenever  they  may  come  to  hand,  keep  them  in  remem- 
brance of  one  who  will  never  forget  your  kind  attention  to  him  in 
Orkney. 

On  reaching  Aberdeen  I  went  to  Inverness  by  rail.  From 
there  I  sent  off  my  luggage  to  Dunkeld,  and  walked  thither  by  the 
Highland  road.  I  never  enjoyed  a  walk  more — the  weather  was 
tolerably  fine,  and  I  was  amidst  some  of  the  finest  scenery  in  the 
world.  I  was  particularly  struck  with  that  of  Glen  Truim.  Near 
the  top  of  the  valley  in  sight  of  the  Craig  of  Badenoch  on  the  left 
hand  side  of  the  way,  I  saw  an  immense  cairn,  probably  the 
memorial  of  some  bloody  clan  battle.  On  my  journey  I  picked  up 
from  the  mouth  of  an  old  Highland  woman  a  most  remarkable 
tale  concerning  the  death  of  Fian  or  Fingal.  It  differs  entirely 
from  the  Irish  legends  which  I  have  heard  on  the  subject — and  is 
of  a  truly  mythic  character.  Since  visiting  Shetland  I  have  thought 
a  great  deal  about  the  Picts,  but  cannot  come  to  any  satisfactory 
conclusion.  Were  they  Celts  ?  were  they  Laps  ?  Macbeth  could 
hardly  have  been  a  Lap,  but  then  the  tradition  of  the  country  that 
they  were  a  diminutive  race,  and  their  name  Pight  or  Pict,  which 
I  almost  think  is  the  same  as  petit — pixolo — puj — pigmy.  It  is  a 
truly  perplexing  subject — quite  as  much  so  as  that  of  Fingal,  and 


IN  SCOTLAND  AND  IRELAND         337 

whether  he  was  a  Scotsman  or  an  Irishman  I  have  never  been 
able  to  (lecide,  as  there  has  been  so  much  to  be  said  on  both  sides 
of  the  question.  Please  present  my  kind  remembrances  to  Mrs. 
Petrie  and  all  friends,  particularly  Mr.  Sheriff  Robertson,^  who 
first  did  me  the  favour  of  making  me  ac(juainted  with  you. — And 
believe  me  to  remain,  dear  Sir,  ever  sincerely  yours, 

Georgk  Borkow. 

Thank  you  for  the  newspaper — the  notice  was  very  kind,  but 
rather  too  flattering. 

On  the  same  day  that  Borrow  wrote,  Mr.  Petrie  sent 
his  acknowledgment  of  the  books,  and  so  the  letters 
crossed  : 

I  was  very  agreeably  surprised  on  opening  a  packet,  which 
came  to  me  per  steamer  ten  days  ago,  to  find  that  it  contained  a 
present  from  you  of  your  highly  interesting  and  valuable  works 

^  Mr.   Sheriflt   Robertson's  son   kindly  sends   me  the  following  extract 
from  the  diary  of  his  father,  James  Robertson,  Sheriff  of  Orkney  : 

'Friday,  26th  November  1858. — In  the  evening  Geo.  Petrie  called  with 
"  Bible  Borrow."  He  is  a  man  about  60,  upwards  of  six  feet  in  height,  and 
of  an  athletic  though  somewhat  gaunt  frame.  His  hair  is  pure  white  though 
a  little  bit  thin  on  the  top,  his  features  high  and  handsome,  and  his  com- 
plexion ruddy  and  healthy.  He  was  dressed  in  black,  his  surtout 
was  old,  his  shoes  very  muddy.  He  spoke  in  a  loud  tone  of  voice, 
knows  Gaelic  and  Irish  well,  quoted  Ian  Lom,  Duncan  Ban  M'lntyre, 
etc.,  is  publishing  an  account  of  Welsh,  Irish,  and  Gaelic  bards.  He 
travelled — on  foot  principally — from  Inverness  to  Thurso,  and  is  going 
on  to-morrow  to  Zetland.  He  walked  lately  through  the  upper  part 
of  Badenoch,  Lochaber,  and  the  adjacent  counties,  and  through  Mull, 
which  he  greatly  admired.  ...  In  his  rambles  he  associated  exclusively 
with  the  lower  classes,  and  when  I  offered  to  give  him  letters  of 
introduction  to  Wm.  F.  Skene,  Robert  Chambers,  Joseph  Robertson, 
etc.,  he  declined  to  accept  them.  His  mother  died  lately  and  he  was 
travelling,  he  said,  to  divert  and  throw  off  his  melancholy.  He  talked 
very  freely  on  all  subjects  that  one  broached,  but  not  with  precision,  and 
he  appeared  to  me  to  be  an  amiable  man  and  a  gentleman,  but,  withal, 
something  of  a  projector,  if  not  an  adventurer.  He  is  certainly  eccentric. 
I  asked  him  to  take  wine,  etc.,  and  he  declined.  He  said  he  was 
bred  at  the  High  School  of  Edinburgh,  and  that  he  wa.s  there  in  1813, 
and  mentioned  that  he  was  partly  educated  in  Ireland,  and  that  by  birth 
and  descent  he  is  an  Englishman.' 

Y 


338    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Lavengro  and  Romany  Rye.  Coming  from  any  person  such  books 
would  have  been  highly  prized  by  me,  and  it  is  therefore  specially 
gratifying  to  have  them  presented  to  me  by  their  author.  Please 
to  accept  of  my  sincere  and  heartfelt  thanks  for  your  kind  re- 
membrance of  me  and  your  valuable  gift.  May  I  request  you  to 
confer  an  additional  favour  on  me  by  sending  me  a  slip  of  paper 
to  be  pasted  on  each  of  the  five  volumes,  stating  that  they  were 
presented  to  me  by  you.  I  would  like  to  hand  them  down  as  an 
heirloom  to  my  family.  I  am  afraid  you  will  think  that  I  am  a 
very  troublesome  acquaintance. 

I  would  have  written  sooner,  but  I  expected  to  have  had  some 
information  to  give  you  about  some  of  the  existing  superstitions 
of  Orkney  which  might  perhaps  have  some  interest  for  you.  I 
have,  however,  been  much  engrossed  with  county  business  during 
the  last  fortnight,  and  must  therefore  reserve  my  account  of  these 
matters  till  another  opportunity. 

Mr.  Balfour,  our  principal  landowner  in  Orkney,  is  just  now 
writing  an  article  on  the  ancient  laws  and  customs  of  the  county 
to  be  prefixed  to  a  miscellaneous  collection  of  documents,  chiefly  of 
the  sixteenth  century.  He  is  taking  the  opportunity  to  give  an 
account  of  the  nature  of  the  tenures  by  which  the  ancient  Jarls  held 
the  Jarldom,  and  the  manner  in  which  the  odalret  became  gradually 
supplanted.  I  have  furnished  him  with  several  of  the  documents, 
and  am  just  now  going  over  it  with  him.  It  is  for  the  Bannatyne 
Club  in  Edinburgh  that  he  is  preparing  it,  but  I  have  suggested  to 
him  to  have  it  printed  for  general  sale,  as  it  is  very  interesting, 
and  contains  a  great  mass  of  curious  information  condensed  into  a 
comparatively  small  space.  Mr.  Balfour  is  very  sorry  that  he  had 
not  the  pleasure  of  meeting  you  when  you  were  here. 

My  last  glimpse  of  George  Borrow  in  Scotland 
during  his  memorable  trip  of  the  winter  of  1858  is 
contained  in  a  letter  that  I  received  some  time  ago 
from  the  Rev.  J.  Wilcock  of  St.  Ringan's  Manse, 
Lerwick,  which  runs  as  follows  : 

Nov.  18th,  1903. 
Dear    Siu, — As    I    see    that    you    are    interested    in    George 
Borrow,  would  you  allow  me  to  supply  you  with  a  little  notice  of 


IN  SCOTLAND  AND  IRELAND         339 

him  which  has  not  appeared  in  print  ?  A  friend  here — need  I 
explain  that  this  is  written  from  tlic  capital  of  the  Shetlands? — 
a  friend,  I  say,  now  dead,  told  me  that  one  day  early  in  the  fore- 
noon, durinjjj  tiie  winter,  he  had  walked  out  from  the  town  for  a 
stroll  into  the  country.  About  a  mile  out  from  the  town  is  a 
piece  of  water  called  the  Loch  of  Clickimin,  on  a  peninsula,  in 
which  is  an  ancient  (so-called)  '  Pictish  Castle.'  His  attention 
was  attracted  by  a  tall,  burly  stranger,  who  was  surveying  this 
ancient  relic  with  deep  interest.  As  the  water  of  the  loch  was 
well  up  about  the  castle,  converting  the  plot  of  ground  on  which 
it  stood  almost  altogether  into  an  island,  the  stranger  took  off' 
shoes  and  stockings  and  trousers,  and  waded  all  round  the  building 
in  order  to  get  a  thorough  view  of  it.  This  procedure  was  all  the 
more  remarkable  from  the  fact,  as  above  mentioned,  that  the  season 
was  winter.  I  believe  that  there  was  snow  on  the  ground  at  the 
time.  My  friend  noticed  on  meeting  him  again  in  the  course  of  the 
same  walk  that  he  was  very  lightly  clothed.  He  had  on  a  cotton 
shirt,  a  loose  open  jacket,  and  on  the  whole  was  evidently  indifferent 
to  the  rigour  of  our  northern  climate  at  that  time  of  the  year. 

In  addition  to  the  visit  to  Belfast  in  1866,  Borrow 
was  in  Ireland  the  year  following  his  Scots  tour  of  1858, 
that  is  to  say  from  July  to  November  1859.  He  went, 
accompanied  by  his  wife  and  daughter,  by  Holyhead  to 
Dublin,  where,  as  Dr.  Knapp  has  discovered,  they 
resided  at  75  St.  Stephen  Green,  South.  Borrow,  as 
was  his  custom,  left  his  family  while  he  was  on  a 
walking  tour  which  included  Connemara  and  on  north- 
ward to  the  Giant's  Causeway.  He  was  keenly 
interested  in  the  two  Societies  in  Dublin  engaged  upon 
the  study  of  ancient  Irish  literature,  and  he  became  a 
member  of  the  Ossianic  Society  in  July  of  this  year. 
I  have  a  number  of  Borrows  translations  from  the 
Irish  in  my  possession,  but  no  notebooks  of  his  tour 
on  this  occasion. 

All  Irishmen  who  wish  their  country  to  preserve  its 
individuality  should  have  a  kindly  feeling  for  George 


340    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Borrow.  Opposed  as  he  was  to  the  majority  of  the 
people  in  rehgion  and  in  politics,  he  was  ahout  the  only 
Englishman  of  his  time  who  took  an  interest  in  their 
national  literature,  language  and  folk-lore.  Had  he 
written  such  another  travel  book  about  Ireland  as 
he  wrote  about  Wales  he  would  certainly  have  added 
to  the  sum  of  human  pleasure. 

I  find  only  one  letter  to  his  wife  during  this  Irish 
journey  : 

To  Mrs.  George  Borrow 

Ballina,  County  Mayo,     Thursday  Morning. 

My  DEAii  Carreta, — I  write  to  you  a  few  lines.  I  have 
now  walked  270  miles,  and  have  passed  through  Leinster  and 
Connaught.  I  have  suffered  a  good  deal  of  hardship,  for  this  is  a 
very  different  country  to  walk  in  from  England.  The  food  is  bad 
and  does  not  agree  with  me.  I  shall  be  glad  to  get  back,  but  first 
of  all  I  wish  to  walk  to  the  Causeway.  As  soon  as  I  have  done 
that  I  shall  get  on  railroad  and  return,  as  I  find  there  is  a  rail- 
road from  Londonderry  to  Dublin.  Pray  direct  to  me  at  Post 
Office,  Londonderry.  I  have  at  present  about  seven  pounds 
remaining,  perhaps  it  would  bring  me  back  to  Dublin ;  however, 
to  prevent  accidents,  have  the  kindness  to  enclose  me  an  order 
on  the  Post  Office,  Londonderry,  for  five  pounds.  I  expect  to  be 
there  next  Monday,  and  to  be  home  by  the  end  of  the  week. 
Glad  enough  I  shall  be  to  get  back  to  you  and  Hen.  I  got  your 
letter  at  Galway.  What  you  said  about  poor  Flora  was  comfort- 
ing— pray  take  care  of  her.  Don't  forget  the  order.  I  hope  to 
write  in  a  day  or  two  a  kind  of  duplicate  of  this.  I  send  Hen. 
heath  from  Connemara,  and  also  seaweed  from  a  bay  of  the 
Atlantic.  I  have  walked  across  Ireland;  the  country  people 
are  civil;  but  I  believe  all  classes  are  disposed  to  join  the  French. 
The  idolatry  and  popery  are  beyond  conception.  God  bless  you, 
dearest.  George  Borrow. 

Love  to  Hen.  and  poor  Flora.     (Keep  this.) 


CHAPTER    XXX 

THE  ROMANY  RYE 

George  Borrow's  three  most  important  books  had  all 
a  very  interesting  history.  We  have  seen  the  processes 
by  which  T/ie  Bible  hi  Spain  was  built  up  from  note- 
books and  letters.  We  have  seen  further  the  most 
curious  apprenticeship  by  which  Lavengro  came  into 
existence.  The  most  distinctly  English  book — at  least 
in  a  certain  absence  of  cosmopolitanism — that  Vic- 
torian literature  produced  was  to  a  great  extent  written 
on  scraps  of  paper  during  a  prolonged  Continental 
tour  which  included  Constantinople  and  Budapest. 
In  lAwengro  we  have  only  half  a  book,  the  whole 
work,  which  included  what  came  to  be  published  as 
The  Romany  RtjC,  having  been  intended  to  appear  in 
four  volumes.  The  first  volume  was  written  in  1843, 
the  second  in  1845,  after  the  Continental  tour,  which  is 
made  use  of  in  the  description  of  the  Hungarian,  and 
the  third  volume  in  the  years  between  1845  and  1848. 
Then  in  1852  Borrow  wrote  out  an  '  advertisement '  of 
a  fourth  volume,^  which  runs  as  follows : 

Shortly  will  be  published  in  one  volume.  Price  10s.  The 
Rommany  Rye,  Beincr  tiie  fourth  volume  of  Lavengi-o.  By  George 
Borrow,  author  of  The  Bible  in  Spain. 

^  Borrow  was  fond  of  writing  out  title-pages  for  his  books,  and  I  have 
a  dozen  or  so  of  these  draft  title-pages  among  my  Borrow  Papers. 

341 


342    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

But  this  volume  did  not  make  an  appearance  *  shortly.' 
Its  author  was  far  too  much  offended  with  the  critics, 
too  disheartened  it  may  be  to  care  to  offer  himself  again 
for  their  gibes.  The  years  rolled  on,  much  of  the  time 
being  spent  at  Yarmouth,  a  little  of  it  at  Oulton.  There 
was  a  visit  to  Cornwall  in  1854,  and  another  to  Wales 
in  the  same  year.  The  Isle  of  Man  was  selected  for  a 
holiday  in  1855,  and  not  until  1857  did  The  Romany 
Rye  appear.  The  book  was  now  in  two  volumes, 
and  we  see  that  the  word  Romany  had  dropped  an 
*  m ' : 

The  Romany  Rye :  A  Sequel  to  '  Lavengro.*"  By  George 
Borrow,  author  of  '  The  Bible  in  Spain,'  '  The  Gypsies  of  Spain,' 
etc.,  '  Fear  God,  and  take  your  own  part.'  In  Two  Volumes. 
London :  John  Murray,  Albemarle  Street,  1857. 

Dr.  Knapp  publishes  some  vigorous  correspondence 
between  Mrs.  Borrow  and  her  husband's  publisher 
written  prior  to  the  issue  of  TJie  Romany  Rye.  '  Mr. 
Borrow  has  not  the  slightest  wish  to  publish  the  book,' 
she  says.  '  The  manuscript  was  left  with  you  because 
you  wished  to  see  it.'^  This  was  written  in  1855,  the 
wife  presumably  writing  at  her  husband's  dictation.  In 
1857  the  situation  was  not  improved,  as  Borrow  himself 
writes  to  Mr.  Murray :  '  In  your  last  letter  you  talk  of 
obliging  me  by  publishing  my  verse.  Now  is  not  that 
speaking  very  injudiciously  ? '  ^      At  last,  however,  in 

^  Dr.  Knapp's  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  1G7. 

2  Borrow's  association  witli  the  firm  of  Murray  deserves  a  chapter  to 
itself,  but  the  material  for  writing  such  a  chapter  has  already  been  used  by 
Dr.  Knapp  and  Mr.  Herbert  Jenkins.  The  present  Mr.  John  Murray,  John 
Murray  iv.,  has  seventy  letters  from  Borrow  to  his  firm  in  his  possession. 
The  first  of  the  name  to  publish  Borrow's  works  was  John  Murray  u.,  who 
died  in  1848.  John  Murray  iii.,  who  died  in  1892,  and  his  partner  and 
cousin  Robert  Cooke,  were  Borrow's  friends.  He  had  differences  at  times, 
but  he  was  loyal  to  them  and  they  were  loyal  to  him  as  good  authors  and 


'THE  ROMANY  RYE'  343 

April  1857,  The  Romany  Rye  appeared,  and  we  are 
introduced  once  more  to  many  old  favourites,  to  Petu- 
lengro,  to  the  Man  in  Black,  and  above  all  to  Isopel 
Berners.  The  incidents  of  Lavengro  are  supposed  to 
have  taken  place  between  the  24th  May  1825  and  the  18th 
July  of  that  year.  In  The  Romany  Rye  the  incidents 
apparently  occur  between  19th  July  and  3rd  August 
1825.  In  the  opinion  of  that  most  eminent  of  gypsy 
experts,  Mr.  John  Sampson,^  the  whole  of  the  episodes 
in  the  five  volumes  occurred  in  seventy-two  days.  Mr. 
Sampson  agrees  with  Dr.  Knapp  in  locating  Mumper's 
Dingle    in    Momber   or    Monmer   Lane,    Willenhall, 

good  publishers  ought  to  be.  With  all  his  irritability  Borrow  had  the 
sense  to  see  that  there  was  substantial  reason  in  their  declining  to  issue  his 
translations.  That,  although  at  the  end  there  were  long  intervals  of  silence, 
the  publishers  and  their  author  remained  friends  is  shown  by  letters  written 
to  his  daughter  after  Borrow's  death^  and  by  the  following  little  note  from 
Borrow  to  John  Murray  which  was  probably  never  sent.  It  is  in  the  feeble, 
broken  handwriting  of  what  was  probably  the  last  year  of  Borrow's  life. 

To  John  Murray,  Esq. 

'OuLTON  [no  date). 

'  My  dear  Friend, — Thank  you  most  sincerely  for  sending  me  the  last 
vol.  of  the  i^luarterliif  a  truly  remarkable  one  it  is,  full  of  literature  of  every 
description — I  should  have  answered  the  receipt  of  it  before  had  I  not  been 
very  unwell.  Should  you  come  to  these  parts  do  me  the  favour  to  look  in 
upon  me — it  might  do  me  good,  and  say  the  same  thing  from  me  to  my  kind 
and  true  friend  Robt.  Cooke.  His  last  visit  to  me  did  me  much  good,  and 
another  might  probably  do  me  the  same.  What  a  horrible  state  the  country 
seems  to  be  in,  and  no  wonder — a  monster-minister  whose  principal  aim 
seems  to  be  the  ruin  of  his  native  land,  a  parliament  either  incompetent  or 
indifferent.  However,  let  us  hope  for  the  best.  Pray  send  my  cordial 
respects  to  Mrs.  Murray  and  kind  regards  to  the  rest  of  your  good  family. — 
Ever  sincerely  yours,  George  Borrow.' 

1  Mr.  Sampson  has  written  an  admirable  introduction  to  The  Romany  Rye 
in  Methuen's  '  Little  Library,'  but  he  goes  rather  far  in  his  suggestion  that 
Borrow  instead  of  writing  '  Joseph  Sell '  for  £20,  possibly  obtained  that  sum 
by  imitating  'the  methods  of  Jerry  Abershaw,  Galloping  Dick,'  or  some  of 
the  'fraternity  of  vagabonds'  whose  lives  Borrow  had  chronicled  in  his 
Celebrated  Trials,  in  other  words,  that  he  stole  the  money. 


344    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Shropshire.  The  dingle  has  disappeared — it  is  now 
occupied  by  the  Monmer  Lane  Ironworks — but  you 
may  still  find  Dingle  Bridge  and  Dingle  Lane.  The 
book  has  added  to  the  glamour  of  gypsydom,  and  to 
the  interest  in  the  gypsies  which  we  all  derive  from 
Laveng7^o,  but  Mr.  Sampson  makes  short  work  of 
Borrows  gypsy  learning  on  its  philological  side.  '  No 
gypsy,'  he  says,  '  ever  uses  dial  or  engro  as  a  separate 
word,  or  talks  of  the  dukkering  dook  or  of  penning  a 
dukkerin.'  '  Borrow 's  genders  are  perversely  incorrect ' ; 
and  '  Romany ' — a  word  which  can  never  get  out  of  our 
language,  let  philologists  say  what  they  will — should 
have  been  '  Romani.'  '  "  Haarstriiubend  "  is  the  fitting 
epithet,'  says  Mr.  Sampson,  *  which  an  Oriental 
scholar.  Professor  Richard  Pischel  of  Berlin,  finds  to 
describe  Borrow's  etymologies.'  But  all  this  is  very 
unimportant,  and  the  book  remains  in  the  whole  of  its 
forty-seven  chapters  not  one  whit  less  a  joy  to  us  than 
does  its  predecessor  Lavengi^o,  with  its  visions  of  gypsies 
and  highwaymen  and  boxers. 

But  then  there  is  its  '  Appendix.'  That  appendix  of 
eleven  petulant  chapters  undoubtedly  did  Borrow  harm 
in  his  day  and  generation.  Now  his  fame  is  too  great, 
and  his  genius  too  firmly  established  for  these  strange 
dissertations  on  men  and  things  to  offer  anything  but 
amusement  or  edification.  They  reveal,  for  example, 
the  singularly  non-literary  character  of  this  great  man 
of  letters.  Much — too  much — has  been  made  of  his 
dislike  of  Walter  Scott  and  his  writings.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  Borrow  tells  us  that  he  admired  Scott  both  as  a 
prose  writer  and  as  a  poet.  '  Since  Scott  he  had  read 
no  modern  writer.  Scott  was  greater  than  Homer,' 
he  told  Frances  Cobbe.  But  he  takes  occasion  to 
condemn   his  '  Charlie   o'er  the  water   nonsense,'  and 


THE  ROMANY  RYE'  345 

declares  that  his  love  of  and  sympathy  with  certain 
periods  and  incidents  have  made  for  sympathy  with 
what  he  always  calls  '  Popery.'^  Well,  looking  at  the 
matter  from  an  entirely  opposite  point  of  view,  Cardinal 
Newman  declared  that  the  writings  of  Scott  had  had 
no  inconsiderable  influence  in  directing  his  mind 
towards  the  Church  of  Rome.^ 

During  the  first  quarter  of  tliis  century  a  great  poet  was 
raised  up  in  the  North,  who,  whatever  were  his  defects,  has  con- 
tributed by  his  works,  in  prose  and  verse,  to  prepare  men  for  some 
closer  and  more  practical  approximation  to  Catholic  truth.  The 
general  need  of  something  deeper  and  more  attractive  than  what 
had  offered  itself  elsewhere  may  be  considered  to  have  led  to  his 
popularity ;  and  by  means  of  his  popularity  he  re-acted  on  his 
readers,  stimulating  their  mental  thirst,  feeding  their  hopes, 
setting  before  them  visions,  which,  when  once  seen,  are  not  easily 
forgotten,  and  silently  indoctrinating  them  with  nobler  ideas, 
which  might  afterwards  be  appealed  to  as  first  principles.^ 

And  thus  we  see  that  Borrow  had  a  certain  prescience 
in  this  matter.  But  Borrow,  in  good  truth,  cared  little 
for  modern  English  literature.  His  heart  was  entirely 
with  the  poets  of  other  lands — the  Scandinavians  and 
the  Kelts.  In  Virgil  he  apparently  took  little  interest, 
nor  in  the  great  poetry  of  Greece,  Rome  and  Eng- 
land, although  we  find  a  reference  to  Theocritus  and 
Dante  in  his  books.  Fortunately  for  his  fame  he  had 
read  Gil  Bias,  Do7i  Quixote,  and,  above  all,  Robinson 
C7msoe,   which  last  book,  first  read  as  a  boy   of  six, 

*  The  Romany  Rye,  Appendix,  ch.  vii. 

2  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  all  the  surviving  memhers  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott's  family  belong  to  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  as  do  certain  members 
of  the  family  of  Newman's  opponent,  Charles  Kingsley.  Several  members 
of  Charles  Dickens's  family  are  also  Roman  Catholics. 

^  Essays  Critical  and  Historical  by  John  Henry  Cardinal  Newman,  vol.  i., 
Longmans.     See  also  Apologia  pro  Vita  Sua,  pp.  9C-'97. 


346    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

coloured  his  whole  life.    Defoe  and  Fielding  and  Bunyan 
were  the  English  authors  to  whom  he  owed  most.     Of 


M4  r   L»wJin-^  roiOd.l^p 


v) 


S^^ES 


^  ^  ^  (fti  IW  ^^^  ^  UmW  i  It  L , }  ^. 


^ 


ti^U 


-->    (X( 


'ViiK*,    .vo— m.j.    IH    HrvKc-     (\U)t-t/ M/WA 


FACSIMILE  OF  A  PAGE  OF  THE  MANUSCRIPT  OF 

TIfE  ROMANY  RYE 

From  the  Borroio  Papers  in  the  possession  of  the  Author  of  George  Borrow  and  his  Circle: 

Byron  he  has  quaint  things  to  say,  and  of  Wordsworth 
things  that  are  neither  quaint  nor  wise.  We  recall  the 
man  in  the  field  in  the  twenty-second  chapter  of  The 


'THE  ROMANY  RYE'  347 

Romany  Rye  who  used  Wordsworth's  poetry  as  a 
soporific.  And  throughout  his  life  Borrow's  position 
towards  his  contemporaries  in  literature  was  ever  con- 
temptuous. He  makes  no  mention  of  Carlyle  or 
Ruskin  or  Matthew  Arnold,  and  they  in  their  turn,  it 
may  be  added,  make  no  mention  of  him  or  of  his  works. 
Thackeray  he  snubbed  on  one  of  the  few  occasions  they 
met,  and  Browning  and  Tennyson  were  alike  unrevealed 
to  him.  Borrow  indeed  stands  quite  apart  from  the 
great  literature  of  a  period  in  which  he  was  a  striking 
and  individual  figure.  Lacking  appreciation  in  this 
sphere  of  work,  he  wrote  of '  the  contemptible  trade  of 
author,'  counting  it  less  creditable  than  that  of  a 
jockey. 

But  all  this  is  a  digression  from  the  progress  of  our 
narrative  of  the  advent  of  The  Romany  Rye.  The  book 
was  published  in  an  edition  of  1000  copies  in  April 
1857,  and  it  took  thirty  years  to  dispose  of  3750  copies. 
Not  more  than  2000  copies  of  his  book  were  sold  in 
Great  Britain  during  the  twenty-three  remaining  years 
of  Borrow's  life.  What  wonder  that  he  was  embittered 
by  his  failure  !  The  reviews  were  far  from  favourable, 
although  Mr.  Elwin  wrote  not  unkindly  in  an  article  in 
the  Quarterly  Review  called  '  Roving  Life  in  England.' 
No  critic,  however,  was  as  severe  as  The  Athenaeum, 
which  had  called  Lavengro  '  balderdash  '  and  referred  to 
The  Romany  Rye  as  the  '  literary  dough  '  of  an  author 
'  whose  dullest  gypsy  preparation  we  have  now  read.'  In 
later  years,  when,  alas !  it  was  too  late,  TJie  Athenceum, 
through  the  eloquent  pen  of  Theodore  Watts,  made 
good  amends.  But  William  Bodham  Donne  wrote 
to  Borrow  with  adequate  enthusiasm  : 


348    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

To  George  Borrow,  Esq. 

12  St.  James's  Square,  May  2^th,  1857. 

My  dear  Sir, — I  received  your  book  some  days  ago,  but  would 
not  write  to  you  before  I  was  able  to  read  it,  at  least  once,  since 
it  is  needless,  I  hope,  for  me  to  assure  you  that  I  am  truly  gratified 
by  the  gift. 

Time  to  read  it  I  could  not  find  for  some  days  after  it  was  sent 
hither,  for  what  with  winding  up  my  affairs  here,  the  election  of 
my  successor,  preparations  for  flitting,  etc.,  etc.,  I  have  been  in- 
cessantly occupied  with  matters  needful  to  be  done,  but  far  less 
agreeable  to  do  than  reading  The  Romany  Rye.  All  I  have  said 
of  Lavengro  to  yourself  personally,  or  to  others  publicly  or 
privately,  I  say  again  of  The  Romany  Rye.  Everywhere  in  it  the 
hand  of  the  master  is  stamped  boldly  and  deeply.  You  join  the 
chisel  of  Dante  with  the  pencil  of  Defoe. 

I  am  rejoiced  to  see  so  many  works  announced  of  yours,  for 
you  have  more  that  is  worth  knowing  to  tell  than  any  one  I  am 
acquainted  with.  For  your  coming  progeny's  sake  I  am  disposed 
to  wish  you  had  worried  the  literary-craft  less.  Brand  and  score 
them  never  so  much,  they  will  not  turn  and  repent,  but  only  spit 
the  more  froth  and  venom.  I  am  reckoning  of  my  emancipation 
with  an  eagerness  hardly  proper  at  my  years,  but  I  cannot  help  it, 
so  thoroughly  do  I  hate  London,  and  so  much  do  I  love  the 
country.  I  have  taken  a  house,  or  rather  a  cottage,  at  Walton  on 
Thames,  just  on  the  skirts  of  Weybridge,  and  there  I  hope  to  see 
you  before  I  come  into  Norfolk,  for  I  am  afraid  my  face  will  not 
be  turned  eastward  for  many  weeks  if  not  months. 

Remember  me  kindly  to  Mrs.  Borrow  and  Miss  Clarke,  and 
believe  me,  my  dear  Sir,  very  truly  and  thankfully  yours. 

Wm.  B.  Donne. 

And  perhaps  a  letter  from  the  then  Town  Clerk  of 
Oxford  is  worth  reproducing  here : 

To  George  Borrow,  Esq. 

Town  Clerk's  Office,  Oxford,  IQth  August  1857. 
Sir, — We  have,  attached  to  our  Corporation,  an  ancient  jocular 


'  THE  ROMANY  RYE  '  349 

court  composed  of  13  of  the  poor  old  freemen  who  attend  the 
elections  and  have  a  king  who  sits  attired  in  scarlet  with  a  crown 
and  sentences  interlopers  (non-freeman)  to  be  cold-burned,  i.e.  a 
bucket  or  so  of  water  introduced  to  the  ofrender''s  sleeve  by  means 
of  the  city  pump;  but  this  infliction  is  of  course  generally  com- 
muted by  a  small  pecuniary  compensation. 

They  call  tiiemselves  '  Slaveonians  "*  or  '  Sclavonians.''  The 
only  notice  we  have  of  them  in  the  city  records  is  by  the  name  of 
'  Slovens  Hall."'  Reading  Romany  Rye  I  notice  your  account  of 
the  Sclaves  and  venture  to  trouble  you  with  this,  and  to  enquire 
whether  you  think  that  the  Sclaves  might  be  connected  through 
the  Saxons  with  the  ancient  municipal  institutions  of  this  country. 
You  are  no  doubt  aware  that  Oxford  is  one  of  the  most  ancient 
Saxon  towns,  being  a  royal  bailiwick  and  fortified  before  the 
Conquest, — Yours  truly.  George  P.  Hester. 

In  spite  of  contemporary  criticism,  The  Romcmy 
Rye  is  a  great  book,  or  rather  it  contains  the  concluding 
chapters  of  a  great  book.  Sequels  are  usually  pro- 
claimed to  be  inferior  to  their  predecessors.  But  The 
Romany  Rye  is  not  a  sequel.  It  is  part  of  LiCivengro, 
and  is  therefore  Borrow's  most  imperishable  monument. 


CHAPTER    XXXI. 

EDWARD  FITZGERALD 

Edward  FitzGerald  once  declared  that  he  was  about 
the  only  friend  with  whom  Borrow  had  never  quarrelled/ 
There  was  probably  no  reason  for  this  exceptional  amity 
other  than  the  '  genius  for  friendship '  with  which  Fitz- 
Gerald has  been  rightly  credited.  There  were  certainly, 
however,  many  points  of  likeness  between  the  two  men 
which  might  have  kept  them  at  peace.  Both  had  written 
copiously  and  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  public  demand 
for  their  work.  Both  revelled  in  translation.  Fitz- 
Gerald's  eight  volumes  in  a  magnificent  American  edi- 
tion consists  mainly  of  translations  from  various  tongues 
which  no  man  presumably  now  reads.  All  the  world  has 
read  and  will  long  continue  to  read  his  translation  or 
paraphrase  of  Omar  Khayyam's  Ruhdiydt.  '  Old  Fitz,'  as 
his  friends  called  him,  lives  by  that,  although  his  letters 
are  among  the  best  in  literature.  Borrow  wrote  four 
books  that  will  live,  but  had  publishers  been  amenable 
*  he  would  have  published  forty,  and  all  as  unsaleable  as 
the  major  part  of  FitzGerald's  translations.  Both  men 
were  Suffolk  squires,  and  yet  delighted  more  in  the 
company  of  a  class  other  than  their  own,  FitzGerald  of 
boatmen.  Borrow  of  gypsies ;  both  were  counted 
eccentrics  in  their  respective  villages.     Perhaps  alone 

^  This  was  said  by  FitzGerald  to  hia  friend  Frederick  Spalding. 

360 


EDWAKD  F1TZGERAI>D  351 

among  the  great  Victorian  authors  they  lived  to  be  old 
witliout  receiving  in  their  lives  any  popular  recogni- 
tion of  their  great  literary  achievements.  But  Fitz- 
Gerald  had  a  more  cultivated  mind  than  Borrow.  He 
loved  literature  and  literary  men  whilst  Borrow  did 
not.  His  criticism  of  books  is  of  the  best,  and  his  friend- 
ships with  bookmen  are  among  the  most  interesting 
in  literary  history.  '  A  solitary,  shy,  kind-hearted  man,' 
was  the  verdict  upon  him  of  the  frequently  censorious 
Carlyle.  When  Anne  Thackeray  asked  her  father 
wliich  of  his  friends  he  had  loved  best,  he  answered 
'  Dear  old  Fitz,  to  be  sure,'  and  Tennyson  would 
have  said  the  same.  Borrow  had  none  of  these  gifts 
as  a  letter-writer  and  no  genius  for  friendship.  The 
charm  of  his  style,  so  indisputable  in  his  best  work, 
is  absent  from  his  letters;  and  his  friends  were 
alienated  one  after  another.  Borrow's  undisciplined 
intellect  and  narrow  upbringing  were  a  curse 
to  him,  from  the  point  of  view  of  his  own  personal 
happiness,  although  they  helped  him  to  achieve  exactly 
the  work  for  which  he  was  best  fitted.  Borrow's 
acquaintance  with  FitzGerald  was  commenced  by  the 
latter,  who,  in  July  1853,  sent  from  Boulge  Hall, 
Suffolk,  to  Oulton  Hall,  in  the  same  county,  his  recently 
published  volume  Six  Dramas  of  Calderon.  He 
apologises  for  making  so  free  with  '  a  great  man  ;  but,  as 
usual,  I  shall  feel  least  fear  before  a  man  like  yourself 
who  both  do  fine  things  in  your  own  language  and  are 
deep  read  in  those  of  others.'  He  also  refers  to  'our 
common  friend  Donne,'  so  that  it  is  probable  that  they 
had  met  at  Donne's  house. ^  The  next  letter,  also 
published  by  Dr.  Knapp,  that  FitzGerald  writes  to 
Borrow  is   dated   from   his   home   in    Great  Portland 

*  Edward  FitzGerald  to  George  Borrow,  in  Knapp's  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  84G. 


352     GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Street  in  1856.  He  presents  his  friend  with  a  Turkish 
Dictionary,  and  announces  his  coming  marriage  to 
Miss  Barton,  '  Our  united  ages  amount  to  96 ! — a 
dangerous  experiment  on  both  sides ' — as  it  proved. 
The  first  reference  to  Borrow  in  the  FitzGerald  Lettei^s 
issued  by  his  authorised  publishers  is  addressed  to 
Professor  Cowell  in  January  1857  : 

I  was  with  Borrow  a  week  ago  at  Donne's,  and  also  at  Yar- 
mouth three  months  ago :  he  is  well,  but  not  yet  agreed  with 
Murray.  He  read  me  a  long  translation  he  had  made  from  the 
Turkish :  which  I  could  not  admire,  and  his  taste  becomes 
stranger  than  ever.^ 

But  Sorrow's  genius  if  not  his  taste  was  always 
admired  by  FitzGerald,  as  the  following  letter  among 
my  Borrow  Papers  clearly  indicates.  Borrow  had 
published  The  Romany  Rye  at  the  beginning  of 
May : 

To  George  Borrow,  Esq.,  Oulton  Hall. 

GoLDiNGTON  Hall,  Bedfokd,  May  24/57.^ 
My  dear  Sir, — Your  Book  was  put  into  my  hands  a  week  ago 
just  as  I  was  leaving  London  ;  so  I  e'en  carried  it  down  here,  and 
have  beenreading  it  under  thebest  Circumstances: — atsuch  a  Season 
— in  the  Fields  as  they  now  are — and  in  company  with  a  Friend 
I  love  best  in  the  world — who  scarce  ever  reads  a  Book,  but  knows 
better  than  I  do  what  they  are  made  of  from  a  hint. 

^  The  Works  of  Edward  FitzGerald,  vol.  ii.  p.  69  (Macmillan). 

*  FitzGerald  was  staying  with  his  friends  Mr.  and  Mrs.  W.  K.  Browne. 
There  is  no  letter  other  than  this  one  to  Borrow  to  recall  that  visits 
which  is,  however,  referred  to  in  the  FitzGerald  Correspondence  (Works, 
vol.  ii.  p.  75)  by  the  following  sentence  : — '  When  in  Bedfordshire  I  put  away 
almost  all  Books  except  Omar  Khayyam  !  which  I  could  not  help  looking 
over  in  a  Paddock  covered  with  Buttercups  and  brushed  by  a  delicious  Breeze, 
while  a  dainty  racing  Filly  of  Browne's  came  startling  up  to  wonder  and 
to  snuff  about  me.'  The  'friend'  of  the  letter  was  of  course  Mr.  W.  K. 
Browne,  who  was  more  of  an  open  air  man  than  a  bookman. 


OULTON  COTTAGE  FROM  THE  KROAD 

Showini;  the  summer-house  on  the  left,  from  a  sketch  by  Henrietta  MacOubrey, 
The  house  which  has  replaced  it  has  another  aspect. 


jfatrold  &■  Sons 


THE  SUMMER-HOUSE,  OULTON,  AS  IT  IS  TO-DAY 


Which,  when  compared   with   Mrs.   MacOubrey's  sketch,   shows  that   it   has 
been  reroofed  and  probably  rebuilt  altogether. 


352 


EDWARD  FITZGERALD  353 

Well,  lying-  in  a  Paddock  of  his,  I  have  been  travelling  along 
with  you  to  Horncastle,  etc, — in  a  very  delightful  way  for  the 
most  part ;  something  as  I  have  travelled,  and  love  to  travel,  with 
Fielding,  Cervantes,  and  Robinson  Crusoe — and  a  smack  of  all 
these  there  seems  to  me,  with  something  beside,  in  your  book. 
But,  as  will  happen  in  Travel,  there  were  some  spots  I  didn't  like 
so  well — didn't  like  at  all:  and  sometimes  wished  to  myself  that  I, 
a  poor  '  Man  of  Taste,'  had  been  at  your  Elbow  (who  are  a  Man  of 
much  more  than  Taste)  to  divert  you,  or  get  you  by  some  means 
to  pass  lightlier  over  some  places.  But  you  wouldn't  have  heeded 
me,  and  won't  heed  me,  and  rmcst  go  your  own  way,  I  think — And 
in  the  parts  I  least  like,  I  am  yet  thankful  for  honest,  daring,  and 
original  Thought  and  Speech  such  as  one  hardly  gets  in  these 
mealy-mouthed  days.  It  was  very  kind  of  you  to  send  me  your 
book. 

My  Wife  is  already  established  at  a  House  called  '  Albert's 
Villa,'  or  some  such  name,  at  Gorlestone — but  a  short  walk  from 
you  :  and  I  am  to  find  myself  there  in  a  few  days.  So  I  shall 
perhaps  tell  you  more  of  my  thoughts  erelong.  Now  I  shall  finish 
this  large  Sheet  with  a  Tetrastich  of  one  Omar  Khayyam  who  was 
an  Epicurean  Infidel  some  500  years  ago : 

\pj  ^^<>   sj<>  ^J  aj.^  ^^^ 

iu*  ^i  iw?  ^1  i'*tf  j^i  c~y  L  <^ 

and  am  yours  very  truly,  Edward  FitzGerat.d. 


*  I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  Edward  Heron-Allen  for  the  information  that  this 
is  the  orig-inal  of  the  last  verse  but  one  in  FitzGerald's  first  version  of  the 
Rubaiydt : 

r  74.   Ah  Moon  of  my  Delight^  who  knowest  no  wane, 
The  Moon  of  Heaven  is  rising  once  again. 
How  oft,  hereafter  rising,  shall  she  look 
Through  this  same  Garden  after  me — in  vain. 


354    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

111  a  letter  to  Cowell  about  the  same  time — June  5, 
1857 — FitzGerald  writes  that  he  is  about  to  set  out  for 
Gorleston,  Great  Yarmouth : 

Within  hail  almost  lives  George  Borrow,  who  has  lately 
published,  and  given  me,  two  new  volumes  of  Lavengro  called 
Romamj  Rye,  with  some  excellent  things,  and  some  very  bad  (as  I 
have  made  bold  to  write  to  him — how  shall  I  face  him !)  You 
would  not  like  the  book  at  all  I  think.i 

It  was  Cowell,  it  will  be  remembered,  who  intro- 
duced FitzGerald  to  the  Persian  poet  Omar,  and  after- 
wards regretted  the  act.  The  first  edition  of  The 
Rubdiydt  of  Omar  Khayyam  appeared  two  years  later, 
in  1859.  Edward  Byles  Cowell  was  born  in  Ipswich 
in  1826,  and  he  was  educated  at  the  Ipswich  Grammar 
School.  It  was  in  the  library  attached  to  the  Ipswich 
Library  Institution  that  Cowell  commenced  the  study 
of  Oriental  languages.  In  1842  he  entered  the  business 
of  his  father  and  grandfather  as  a  merchant  and 
maltster.  When  only  twenty  years  of  age  he  com- 
menced his  friendship  with  Edward  FitzGerald,  and 
their  correspondence  may  be  found  in  Dr.  Aidis 
Wright's  FitzGerald  Correspondence.  In  1850  he  left 
his  brother  to  carry  on  the  business  and  entered  him- 

Tbe  literal  translation  is  : 

U^   L_s***^   '^■^   L5'*'^  ^^  b^'y^ 

Since  no  one  will  guarantee  thee  a  to-morrow, 

Make  thou  happy    now     this  lovesick  heart ; 

Drink  wine  in  the  moonlight,  O  Moon,  for  the  Moon 

Shall  seek  us  long  and  shall  not  find  us. 
1  The  Works  of  Edward  FitzGerald,  vol.  ii.  p.  74  (Macmillan). 


EDWARD  FITZGERALD  355 

self  at  Magdalen  Hall,  Oxford,  where  he  passed  six 
years.  At  intervals  he  read  Greek  with  FitzGerald  and, 
later,  Persian.  FitzGerald  commenced  to  learn  this 
last  language,  which  was  to  bring  him  fame,  when  he 
was  forty-four  years  of  age.  In  1856  Cowell  was 
appointed  to  a  Professorship  of  English  History  at 
Calcutta,  and  from  there  he  sent  FitzGerald  a  copy  of 
the  manuscript  of  Omar  Khayyam,  afterwards  lent  by 
FitzGerald  to  Borrow.  Much  earlier  than  this — in 
1853 — FitzGerald  had  written  to  Borrow  : 

At  Ipswich,  indeed,  is  a  man  whom  you  would  like  to  know,  I 
think,  and  who  would  like  to  know  you  ;  one  Edward  Cowell :  a 
great  scholar,  if  I  may  judge.  ,  .  .  Should  you  go  to  Ipswich  do 
look  for  him  !  a  great  deal  more  worth  looking  for  (I  speak  witli 
no  sham  modesty,  I  am  sure)  than  yours, — E.  F,  G.^ 

Twenty-six  years  afterwards — in  1879 — we  find  Fitz- 
Gerald writing  to  Dr.  Aldis  Wright  to  the  effect  that 
Cowell  had  been  seized  with  '  a  wish  to  learn  Welsh 
under  George  Borrow  ' : 

And  as  he  would  not  venture  otherwise,  I  gave  him  a  Note  of 
Introduction,  and  off  he  went,  and  had  an  hour  with  the  old  Boy, 
who  was  hard  of  hearing  and  shut  up  in  a  stuffy  room,  but  cordial 
enough ;  and  Cowell  was  glad  to  have  seen  the  Man,  and  tell  him 
that  it  was  his  Wild  Wales  which  first  inspired  a  thirst  for  this 
lansuao;e  into  the  Professor." 

This   introduction   and  meeting   are   described  by 
Professor  Cowell  in  the  following  letter  :  ^ 

Cambridge,  December  10,  1892, 
Dear  Sir, — I  fear  I  cannot  help  you  much  by  my  reminiscences 


1  Letters  of  Edward  FitzGerald,  vol.  ii.  p.  16. 
■'  Ibid.,  vol.  iv.  p.  85  (Macmillan). 

3  First  published  in  The  Sphere,  October  31, 1903.   The  letter  was  written  to 
Mr.  James  Hooper  of  Norwich. 


356    GEORGE  BORKOW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

of  Borrow.  I  never  had  the  slightest  interest  in  the  gipsies,  but 
I  always  had  a  corner  in  my  heart  for  Spain  and  Wales,  and  con- 
sequently The  Bible  in  Spain  and  Wild  Wales  have  always  been 
favourite  books.  But  though  Borrow's  works  were  well  known  to 
me,  I  never  saw  him  but  once,  and  what  I  saw  of  him  then  made 
me  feel  that  he  was  one  of  those  men  who  put  the  best  part  of 
themselves  into  their  books.  We  get  the  pure  gold  there  without 
the  admixture  of  alloy  which  daily  life  seemed  to  impart. 

I  was  staying  one  autumn  at  Lowestoft  some  ten  years  or  more 
ago  when  I  asked  my  dear  old  friend,  Mr.  Edward  FitzGerald,  to 
give  me  a  letter  of  introduction  to  Mr.  George  Borrow.  Armed 
with  this  I  started  on  my  pilgrimage  and  took  a  chaise  for  Oulton 
Hall.  I  remember  as  we  drew  near  we  turned  into  a  kind  of  drift 
road  through  the  fields  where  the  long  sweeping  boughs  of  the 
trees  hung  so  low  that  I  lost  my  hat  more  than  once  as  we  drove 
along.  My  driver  remarked  that  the  old  gentleman  would  not 
allow  any  of  his  trees  to  be  cut.  When  we  reached  the  hall  I 
went  in  at  the  gate  into  the  farmyard,  but  I  could  see  nobody 
about  anywhere.  I  walked  up  to  the  front  door,  but  nobody 
answered  my  knock  except  some  dogs,  who  began  barking  from 
their  kennels.  At  last  in  answer  to  a  very  loud  knock,  the  door 
was  opened  by  an  old  gentleman  whom  I  at  once  recognised  by 
the  engraving  to  be  Borrow  himself.  I  gave  him  my  letter  and 
introduced  myself.  He  replied  in  a  tone  of  humorous  petulance, 
'  What  is  the  good  of  your  bringing  me  a  letter  when  I  haven't 
got  my  spectacles  to  read  it  ? '  However,  he  took  me  into  his 
room,  where  I  fancy  my  knock  had  roused  him  from  a  siesta.  We 
soon  got  into  talk.  He  began  by  some  unkind  remarks  about  one 
or  two  of  our  common  friends,  but  I  soon  turned  the  subject  to 
books,  especially  Spanish  and  Welsh  books.  Here  I  own  I  was 
disappointed  in  his  conversation.  I  talked  to  him  about  Ab 
Gwilym,  whom  he  speaks  so  highly  of  in  Wild  Wales,  but  his 
interest  was  languid.  He  did  not  seem  interested  when  I  told 
him  that  the  London  Society  of  Cymmrodorion  were  publishing 
in  their  journal  the  Welsh  poems  of  lolo  Goch,  the  bard  of  Owen 
Glendower  who  fought  with  our  Henry  v.,  two  of  whose  poems 
Borrow  had  given  spirited  translations  of  in  Wild  Wales.  He 
told  me  he  had  heaps  of  translations  from  Welsh  books  somewhere 
in  his  cupboards  but  he  did  not  know  where  to  lay  his  hand  on 


KDWARD  FITZGERALD  357 

them.  He  did  not  show  me  one  Welsh  or  Spanish  book  of  any 
kind.  You  may  easily  imagine  that  I  was  disappointed  with  my 
interview  and  I  never  cared  to  visit  him  again.  Borrow  was  a 
man  of  real  genius,  and  his  Bible  in  Spain  and  Wild  Wales  are 
unique  books  in  tlieir  way,  but  with  all  his  knowledge  of  languages 
he  was  not  a  scholar.  I  should  be  the  last  person  to  depreciate 
his  Sleeping  Bard,  for  I  owe  a  great  deal  to  it  as  it  helped  me  to 
read  the  Welsh  original,  but  it  is  full  of  careless  mistakes.  The 
very  title  is  wrong ;  it  should  not  be  the  Visions  of  the  Sleeping 
Bard  but  the  Visions  of  the  Bard  Sleep,  as  the  bard  or  prophet 
Sleep  shows  the  author  in  a  series  of  dreams — his  visions  of  life, 
death,  and  hell,  which  form  the  three  chapters  of  the  book. 

Borrow  knew  nothing  of  philology.  His  strange  version  of  'Om 
mani  padme  hum  '  (Oh  !  the  gem  in  the  lotus  ho  !)  must  have  been 
taken  from  some  phonetic  representation  of  the  sounds  as  heard 
by  an  ignorant  traveller  in  China  or  Mongolia. 

I  have  written  this  long  letter  lured  on  by  my  recollections,  but 
after  all  I  can  tell  you  nothing.  Surely  it  is  best  that  Borrow 
should  remain  a  name  ;  we  have  the  best  part  of  him  still  living 
in  his  best  books. 

'  He  gave  the  people  of  his  best ; 
His  worst  he  kept^  his  best  he  gave.' 

I  don't  see  why  we  should  trouble  ourselves  about  his  '  worst.' 
He  had  his  weaker  side  like  all  of  us,  the  foolish  part  of  his  nature 
as  well  as  the  wise ;  but  '  de  mortuis  nil  nisi  bonum  '  especially 
applies  in  such  cases. — I  remain,  dear  sir,  yours  sincerely, 

E.    B.    Co  WELL. 

There  is  one  short  letter  from  FitzGerald  to  Borrow 
in  Dr.  Aldis  Wright's  FitzGerald  Letters.  It  is  dated 
June  1857  and  from  it  we  learn  that  FitzGerald  lent 
Borrow  the  Calcutta  manuscript  of  Omar  Khayyam, 
upon  which  he  based  his  own  immortal  translation,  and 
from  a  letter  to  W.  H.  Thompson  in  1861  we  learn  that 
Cowell,  who  had  inspired  the  writing  of  FitzGerald's 
Omar  Khayyam,  Donne  and  Borrow  were  the  only  three 
friends  to  whom  he  had  sent  copies  of  his  '  peccadilloes 


358    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

in  verse '  as  he  calls  his  remarkable  translation,^  and  this 
two  years  after  it  was  published.  A  letter,  dated  July 
6,  1857,"  asks  for  the  return  of  FitzGerald's  copy  of 
the  Ouseley  manuscript  of  Omar  Khayyam,  Borrow 
having  clearly  already  returned  the  Calcutta  manu- 
script.    This  letter  concludes  on  a  pathetic  note : 

My  old  Parson  Crabbe  is  bowing  down  under  epileptic  fits,  or 
something  Hke,  and  I  believe  his  brave  old  white  head  will  soon 
sink  into  the  village  church  sward.  Why,  our  time  seems  coming. 
Make  way,  gentlemen  ! 

Borrow  comes  more  than  once  into  the  story  of 
FitzGerald's  great  translation  of  Omar  Khayyam,  which 
in  our  day  has  caused  so  great  a  sensation,  and  deserves 
all  the  enthusiasm  that  it  has  excited  as  the 

' .  .  .  golden  Eastern  lay, 

Than  which  I  know  no  version  done 

In  English  more  divinely  well,'' 

to  quote  Tennyson's  famous  eulogy.  Cowell,  to  his 
after  regret,  for  he  had  none  of  FitzGerald's  dolce 
far  niente  paganism,  had  sent  FitzGerald  from  Cal- 
cutta, where  he  was,  the  manuscript  of  Omar 
Khayyam's  Ruhdiydt  in  Persian,  and  FitzGerald  was 
captured  by  it.  Two  years  later,  as  we  know,  he  pro- 
duced the  translation,  which  was  so  much  more  than  a 
translation.  '  Omar  breathes  a  sort  of  consolation  to 
me,'  he  wrote  to  Cowell.  '  Borrow  is  greatly  delighted 
with  your  MS.  of  Omar  which  I  showed  him,'  he  says  in 
another  letter  to  Cowell  (June  23,  1857),  'delighted  at 
the  terseness  so  unusual  in  Oriental  verse.' ^ 

*   Works  of  Edward  FitzGerald,  vol.  ii.  p.  135  (Macmillan). 
2  Published  by  Dr.  Kiiapp  in  Borrows  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  o48  (Murray). 
^  We  learn  from  FitzGerald  that  Borrow's  eyesight  gave  way  about  this 
time,  and  his  wife  had  to  keep  all  books  from  him. 


EDWARD  FITZGERATT)  359 

The  next  two  letters  by  FitzGerald  from  my 
Borrow  Papers  are  of  the  year  1859,  the  year  of  the  first 
publication  of  the  Rubdlijdt : 

To  George  Borrow,  P'sq. 

10  Marine  Parade,  Lowestoft. 

My  dear  Borrow, — I  have  come  here  with  three  nieces  to  give 
them  sea  air  and  change.  They  are  all  perfectly  quiet,  sensible,  and 
unpretentious  girls ;  so  as,  if  you  will  come  over  here  any  day  or 
days,  we  will  find  you  board  and  bed  too,  for  a  week  longer  at  any 
rate.  There  is  a  good  room  below,  which  we  now  only  use  for 
meals,  but  which  you  and  I  can  be  quite  at  our  sole  ease  in. 
Won't  you  come  ? 

I  purpose  (and  indeed  have  been  some  while  intention ing)  to  go 
over  to  Yarmouth  to  look  for  you.  But  I  write  this  note  in  hope 
it  may  bring  you  hither  also. 

Donne  has  got  his  soldier  boy  home  from  India — Freddy — I 
always  thought  him  a  very  nice  fellow  indeed.  No  doubt  life  is 
happy  enough  to  all  of  them  just  now.  Donne  has  been  on  a 
visit  to  the  Highlands — which  seems  to  have  pleased  him — I  have 
got  an  MS.  of  Bahram  and  his  Seven  Castles  (Persian),  which  I 
have  not  yet  cared  to  look  far  into.  Will  you  ?  It  is  short, 
fairly  transcribed,  and  of  some  repute  in  its  own  country,  I  hear. 
Co  well  sent  it  me  from  Calcutta ;  but  it  almost  requires  Ms 
company  to  make  one  devote  one's  time  to  Persian,  when,  with 
what  remains  of  one's  old  English  eyes,  one  can  read  the  Odyssey 
and  Shakespeare. 

With  compliments  to  the  ladies,  believe  me,  Yours  very  truly, 

Edward  FitzGerald. 

I  didn't  know  you  were  back  from  your  usual  summer  tour  till 
Mr.  Cobb  told  my  sister  lately  of  having  seen  you. 

To  George  Borrow,  Esq. 

Bath  House,  Lowestoft^  October  10/59. 
Dear  Borrow, — This  time  last  year  I  was  here  and  wrote  to 


360    GEORGE  BORROW  A^B  HIS  CIRCLE 

ask  about  you.  You  were  gone  to  Scotland.  Well,  where  are  you 
now  ?  As  I  also  said  last  year :  '  If  you  be  in  Yarmouth  and 
have  any  mind  to  see  me  I  will  go  over  some  day ;  or  here  I  am 
if  you  will  come  here.  And  I  am  quite  alone.  As  it  is  I  would 
bus  it  to  Yarmouth  but  I  don''t  know  if  you  and  yours  be  there 
at  all,  nor  if  there,  whereabout.  If  I  don't  hear  at  all  I  shall 
suppose  you  are  not  there,  on  one  of  your  excursions,  or  not 
wanting  to  be  rooted  out ;  a  condition  I  too  well  understand.  I 
was  at  Gorleston  some  months  ago  for  some  while;  just  after 
losing  my  greatest  friend,  the  Bedfordshire  lad  who  was  crushed 
to  death,  coming  home  from  hunting,  his  horse  falling  on  him. 
He  survived  indeed  two  months,  and  I  had  been  to  bid  him 
eternal  adieu,  so  had  no  appetite  for  anything  but  rest — rest — 
rest.  I  have  just  seen  his  widow  oft'  from  here.  With  kind 
regards  to  the  ladies,  Yours  very  truly, 

Edward  FitzGerald. 

In  a  letter  to  George  Crabbe  the  third,  and  the 
grandson  of  the  poet,  in  1862,  FitzGerald  tells  him 
that  he  has  just  been  reading  Borrow's  Wild  Wales, 
'  which  /  like  well  because  I  can  hear  him  talking  it. 
But  I  don't  know  if  others  will  like  it.'  '  No  one 
writes  better  English  than  Borrow  in  general,'  he  says. 
But  FitzGerald,  as  a  lover  of  style,  is  vexed  with  some 
of  Borrow's  phrases,  and  instances  one  :  '  "  The  scenery 
was  beautiful  to  a  degree,''  What  degree  ?  When  did 
this  vile  phrase  arise  ? '  The  criticism  is  j ust,  but  Borrow, 
in  common  with  many  otiier  great  English  authors 
whose  work  will  live  was  not  uniformly  a  good  stylist. 
He  has  many  lamentable  fallings  away  from  the  ideals 
of  the  stylist.  But  he  will,  by  virtue  of  a  wonderful 
individuality,  outlive  many  a  good  stylist.  His  four 
great  books  are  immortal,  and  one  of  them  is  Wild 
Wales. 

We  have  a  glimpse  of  FitzGerald  in  the  follow- 
ing  letter  in  my  possession,  by  the   friend   who   had 


EDWARD  FITZGERALD  361 

introduced      him      to      Borrow,      William     Bodham 
Donne :  ^ 


To  George  Borrow,  Esq. 

40  Wkymouth  Street,  Portland  Place,  W,,  November  28/62. 

My  dear  Borrow, — Many  thanks  for  the  copy  of  Wild  Wales 
reserved  for  and  sent  to  me  by  Mr.  R.  Cooke."  Before  this  copy 
arrived  I  had  obtained  one  from  the  London  Library  and  read  it 
through,  not  exactly  stans  pcde  in  una,  but  certainly  almost  at  a 
stretch.  I  could  not  indeed  lay  it  down,  it  interested  me  so  much. 
It  is  one  of  the  very  best  records  of  home  travel,  if  indeed  so 
strange  a  country  as  Wales  is  can  properly  be  called  home,  I  have 
ever  met  with. 

Immediately  on  closing  the  third  volume  I  secured  a  few  pages 
in  Fraser's  Magazine  for  Wild  Wales,  for  though  you  do  not  stand 
in  need  of  my  aid,  yet  my  notice  will  not  do  you  a  mischief,  and 


^  There  are  two  or  three  references  to  Borrow  in  William  Bodham  Donne 
and  his  Friends,  edited  by  Catharine  B.  Johnson  (Methuen).  The  most 
important  of  these  is  in  a  letter  from  Donne  to  Bernard  Barton,  dated  from 
Bury  St.  Edmunds,  September  12th,  1848  : 

'  We  have  had  a  great  man  here,  and  I  have  been  walking  with  him  and 
aiding  him  to  eat  salmon  and  mutton  and  drink  port — George  Borrow  ;  and 
what  is  more,  we  fell  in  with  some  gypsies  and  I  heard  the  speech  of  Egypt, 
which  sounded  wonderously  like  a  medley  of  broken  Spanish  and  dog  Latin. 
Sorrow's  face  lighted  by  the  red  turf  fire  of  the  tent  was  worth  looking  at. 
He  is  ashy  white  now,  but  twenty  years  ago,  when  his  hair  was  like  a  raven's 
wing,  he  must  have  been  hard  to  discriminate  from  a  born  Bohemian.  Borrow 
is  best  on  the  tramp,  if  you  can  walk  four  and  a  half  miles  per  hour — as  I  can 
with  ease  and  do  by  choice — and  can  walk  fifteen  of  them  at  a  stretch — 
which  I  can  compass  also — then  he  will  talk  Iliads  of  adventures  even  better 
than  his  printed  ones.  He  cannot  abide  those  amateur  pedestrians  who 
saunter,  and  in  his  chair  he  is  given  to  groan  and  be  contradictoi-y.  But  on 
Newmarket  Heath,  in  Rougham  Woods,  he  is  at  home,  and  specially  when 
he  meets  with  a  thorough  vagabond  like  your  present  correspondent.' 

In  June  1874  FitzGerald  writes  to  Donne  : 

'I  saw  in  some  Athenceum  a  somewhat  contemptuous  notice  of  G. B.'s 
Rommany  Lit  or  whatever  the  name  is.  I  can  easily  understand  that  B.  should 
not  meddle  with  science  of  any  sort ;  but  some  years  ago  he  would  not  have 
liked  to  be  told  so  ;  however,  old  age  may  have  cooled  him  now.' 

^  Mr.  Robert  Cooke  was  a  partner  in  John  Murray's  firm  at  this  time. 


362    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

some  of  the  reviewers  of  Lavengro  were,  I  recollect,  shocking 
blockheads,  misinterpreting  the  letter  and  misconceiving  the  spirit 
of  that  work.  I  have,  since  we  met  in  Burlington  Arcade,  been 
on  a  visit  to  FitzGerald.  He  is  in  better  spirits  by  far  than  when 
I  saw  him  about  the  same  time  in  last  year.  He  has  his  pictures 
and  his  chattels  about  him,  and  has  picked  up  some  acquaintance 
among  the  merchants  and  mariners  of  Woodbridge,  who,  although 
far  below  his  level,  are  yet  better  company  than  the  two  old 
skippers  he  was  consorting  with  in  1861.  They — his  present 
friends — came  in  of  an  evening,  and  sat  and  drank  and  talked, 
and  I  enjoyed  their  talk  very  much,  since  they  discussed  of  what 
they  understood,  which  is  more  than  I  can  say  generally  of  the 
fine  folks  I  occasionally  (very  occasionally  now)  meet  in  London. 
I  should  have  said  more  about  your  book,  only  I  wish  to  keep  it 
for  print :  and  you  don't  need  to  be  told  by  me  that  it  is  very 
good. — With  best  regards  to  Mrs.  Borrow  and  Miss  Clarke,  I  am, 
yours  ever  truly,  W.  B.  Donne. 

The  last  letter  from  FitzGerald  to  Borrow  is  dated 
many  years  after  the  correspondence  I  have  here 
printed,^  and  from  it  we  gather  that  there  had  been 
no  correspondence  in  the  interval.^  FitzGerald  writes 
from  Little  Grange,  Woodbridge,  in  January  1875, 
to  say  that  he  had  received  a  message  from  Borrow 
that  he  would  be  glad  to  see  him  at  Oulton.  '  I 
think  the  more  of  it,'  says  FitzGerald,  '  because 
I  imagine,  from  what  I  have  heard,  that  you  have 
slunk  away  from  human  company  as  much  as  I 
have.'  He  hints  that  they  might  not  like  one  another 
so  well  after  a  fifteen  years'  separation.  He  declares 
with  infinite  pathos  that  he  has  now  severed  himself 
from  all  old  ties,  has  refused  the  invitations  of  old 
college  friends  and  old  school-fellows.  To  him  there 
was  no  companionship  possible  for  his  declining  days 
other  than  his  reflections  and  verses.     It  is  a  fine  letter, 

'  It  is  to  be  found  in  Dr.  Knapp's  Life,  vol.  ii.  pp.  248-9. 
^  1  have  a  copy  of  FitzGerald's. 


EDWARD    FTTZGEKAT.D  363 

filled  with  that  graciousness  of  spirit  that  was  ever  a 
trait  in  FitzGerald's  noble  nature.  The  two  men 
never  met  again.  When  Borrow  died,  in  1881,  Fitz- 
Gerald,  who  followed  him  two  years  later,  suggested  to 
Dr.  Aldis  Wright,  afterwards  to  be  his  (FitzGerald's) 
executor,  who  was  staying  with  him  at  the  time,  that 
he  should  look  over  Borrow's  books  and  manuscripts  if 
his  stepdaughter  so  desired.  If  this  had  been  arranged, 
and  Dr.  Aldis  Wright  had  written  Borrow's  life,  there 
would  have  been  no  second  biographer.^ 

1  Dr.  Aldis  Wright  tells  me  that  he  did  go  over  to  Oulton  to  see  Mrs. 
MacOubreyj  and  gave  her  the  best  advice  he  could,  but  it  was  neglected. 


CHAPTER    XXXII 

WILD  WALES 

The  year  1854  was  an  adventurous  one  in  Borrow's  life, 
for  he,  so  essentially  a  Celt,  as  Mr.  Watts-Dunton  has 
more  than  once  reminded  us,^  had  in  that  year  two 
interesting  experiences  of  the  'Celtic  Fringe.'  He  spent 
the  first  months  of  the  year  in  Cornwall,  as  we  have 
seen,  and  from  July  to  November  he  was  in  Wales. 
That  tour  he  recorded  in  pencilled  note-books,  four  of 
which  are  in  the  Knapp  Collection  in  New  York,  and 
are  duly  referred  to  in  Dr.  Knapp's  biography,  and  two  of 
which  are  in  my  possession.  In  addition  to  this  I  have 
the  complete  manuscript  of  Wild  Wales  in  Borrow's 
handwriting,  and  many  variants  of  it  in  countless,  care- 
fully written  pages.  Therein  lie  the  possibilities  of  a 
singularly  interesting  edition  of  Wild  Wales  should 
opportunity  offer  for  its  publication.  When  I  examine 
the  manuscript,  with  its  demonstration  of  careful 
preparation,  I  do  not  wonder  that  it  took  Borrow  eight 
years — from  1854  to  1862 — to  prepare  this  book  for 
the  press.  Assuredly  we  recognise  here,  as  in  all  his 
books,  that  he  realised  Carlyle's  definition  of  genius — 

1  '  Not  one  drop  of  East  Anglian  blood  was  in  the  veins  of  Borrow's  father, 
and  very  little  in  the  veins  of  his  mother.  Borrow's  ancestry  was  pure 
Cornish  on  one  side,  and  on  the  other  mainly  French.' — Theodore  Watts- 
Dunton  :  Introduction  to  The  Romany  Rye  (Ward  and  Lock). 

364 


'WILD  WALES'  365 

'  the    transcendent    capacity    of    taking   trouble — first 
of  all.' 

It  was  on   27th  July  1854  that  Borrow,  his  wife 
and  her  daughter,  Henrietta  Clarke,  set  out  on  their 


u 

hf^j  \VM.  kA^  ^  oaJva 


WILD  WALES  IN  ITS  BEGINNINGS. 

Two  pages  from  one  of  George  Borrow's  Pocket-books  with  pencilled 
notes  made  on  his  journey  through  Walos. 


journey  to  North  Wales.  Dr.  Knapp  prints  two  kindly 
letters  from  Mrs.  Borrow  to  her  mother-in-law  written 
from  Llangollen  on  this  tour.  '  We  are  in  a  lovely  quiet 
spot,'  she  writes,  '  Dear  George  goes  out  exploring  the 
mountains.  .  .  .  The  poor   here  are    humble,  simple. 


366    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

and  good.'  In  the  second  letter  Mrs.  Borrow  records 
that  her  husband  '  keeps  a  daily  journal  of  all  that 
goes  on,  so  that  he  can  make  a  most  amusing  book  in  a 
month.'  Yet  Borrow  took  eight  years  to  make  it. 
The  failure  of  The  Romany  Rye,  which  was  due  for 
publication  before  Wild  Wales,  accounts  for  this,  and 
perhaps  also  the  disappointment  that  another  book, 
long  since  ready,  did  not  find  a  publisher.  In  the 
letter  from  which  I  have  quoted  Mary  Borrow  tells 
Anne  Borrow  that  her  son  will,  she  expects  at  Christmas, 
publish  The  Romany  Rye,  *  together  with  his  poetry  in 
all  the  European  languages.'  This  last  book  had  been 
on  his  hands  for  many  a  day,  and  indeed  in  Wild  Wales 
he  writes  of '  a  mountain  of  unpublished  translations '  of 
which  this  book,  duly  advertised  in  The  Romany  Rye, 
was  a  part.^ 

After  an  ascent  of  Snowdon  arm  in  arm  with 
Henrietta,  Mrs.  Borrow  remaining  behind,  Borrow  left 
his  wife  and  daughter  to  find  their  way  back  to 
Yarmouth,  and  continued  his  journey,  all  of  which  is 
most  picturesquely  described  in  Wild  Wales.  Before 
that  book  was  published,  however.  Borrow  was  to  visit 
the  Isle  of  INIan,  Scotland,  and  Ireland.  He  was  to 
publish  Laveng7'0  (1857)  ;  to  see  his  mother  die  (1858) ; 
and  to  issue  his  very  limited  edition  of  The  Sleeping 
Bard  (1860) ;  and,  lastly,  to  remove  to  Brompton 
(1860).  It  was  at  the  end  of  the  year  1862  that  Wild 
Wales  was  published.  It  had  been  Written  during  the 
two  years  immediately  following  the  tour  in  Wales,  in 
1855  and  1856.  It  had  been  announced  as  ready  for 
publication  in  1857,  but  doubtless  the  chilly  reception 

1  The  advertisement  describes  it  thus  :  '  In  two  volumes,  Songs  of  Europe: 
or  Metrical  Trnnslatiojis  from  all  the  European  Languages  ;  With  Brief  Prefatory 
Remarks  on  each  Language  and  its  Literature,' 


*  WILD  WALES  '  367 

of  The  Romany  Rye  in  that  year,  of  wliich  we  liave 
written,  had  made  Borrow  lukewarm  as  to  venturing 
once  more  before  the  public.  The  public  was  again 
irresponsive.  The  Cor^nhill  Magazine,  then  edited  by 
Thackeray,  declared  the  book  to  be  'tiresome  reading.' 
The  Spectatoi^  reviewer  was  more  kindly,  but  nowhere 
was  there  any  enthusiasm.  Only  a  thousand  copies  were 
sold,^  and  a  second  edition  did  not  appear  until  1865, 
and  not  another  until  seven  years  after  Borrow's 
death.  Yet  the  author  had  the  encouragement  that 
comes  from  kindly  correspondents.  Here,  for  example, 
is  a  letter  that  could  not  but  have  pleased  him  : 


West  Hill  Lodge,  Highgate, 
Dec.  2i)th,  1862. 

Dear  Sir, — We  have  bad  a  great  Christmas  pleasure  this  year 
— the  reading  of  your  Wild  Wales,  which  has  taken  us  so  deliciously 
into  the  lovely  fresh  scenery  and  life  of  that  pleasant  mountain- 
land.  My  husband  and  myself  made  a  little  walking  tour  over 
some  of  your  ground  in  North  Wales  this  year ;  my  daughter  and 
her  uncle,  Richard  Howitt,  did  the  same ;  and  we  have  been  our- 
selves collecting  material  for  a  work,  the  scenes  of  which  will  be 
laid  amidst  some  of  our  and  your  favourite  mountains.  But  the 
object  of  my  writing  was  not  to  tell  you  this;  but  after  assuring 
you  of  the  pleasure  your  work  has  given  us — to  say  also  that  in 
one  respect  it  has  tantalised  us.  You  have  told  over  and  over 
again  to  fascinated  audiences,  Lope  de  Vega's  ghost  story,  but  still 
leave  the  poor  reader  at  the  end  of  the  book  longing  to  hear  it 
in  vain. 

May  I  ask  you,  therefore,  to  inform  us  in  which  of  Lope  de 
Vega's  numerous  works  this  same  ghost  story  is  to  be  found  ?  We 
like  ghost  stories,  and  to  a  certain  extent  believe  in  them,  we 
deserve  therefore  to  know  the  best  ghost  story  in  the  world: 

Wishing  for  you,  your  wife  and  your  Henrietta,  all  the  com- 

^   Wild   Wales:  Its  People,  Languuge,  and  Scenery.     By  George  Borrow. 
3  vols.     John  Murray,  1862. 


368    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 


V 


l^ 


\^i  hmm.  %i  ^m 


ivrti  ^wvrnr 


iVr 


I  mm 


n 


Jf'!^  V^n\  K  ill  li^ 


vim^ 


m^ 


FACSIMILE    OF    THE    TITLE-PAGE    OF    WILD    WALES 

From  the  original  Manuscript  in  the  possession  of  the  Author 
of  '  George  Borrow  and  his  Circle.' 


'WILD  WALES'  369 

pliments  of  the  season  in  the  best  and  truest  sense  of  expression. 
— I  am,  dear  sir,  yours  sincerely,  Mary  Howitt.^ 

The  reference  to  Lope  de  Vega's  ghost  story  is  due 
to  the  fact  that  in  the  fifty-fifth  chapter  of  JVild  J  Vales, 
Borrow,  after  declaring  that  Lope  de  Vega  was  '  one  of 
the  greatest  geniuses  that  ever  lived,'  added,  that  among 
his  tales  may  be  found  *  the  best  ghost  story  in  the 
world.'  Dr.  Knapp  found  the  story  in  Borrow's  hand- 
writing among  the  manuscripts  that  came  to  him,  and 
gives  it  in  full.  In  good  truth  it  is  but  moderately 
interesting,  although  Borrow  seems  to  have  told  it  to 
many  audiences  when  in  Wales,  but  this  perhaps  pro- 
vides the  humour  of  the  situation.  It  seems  clear  that 
Borrow  contemplated  publishing  Lope  de  Vega's  ghost 
story  in  a  later  book.  We  note  here,  indeed,  a  letter  of 
a  much  later  date  in  which  Borrow  refers  to  the  pos- 
sibility of  a  supplement  to  fVild  Wales,  the  only 
suggestion  of  such  a  book  that  I  have  seen,  although 
there  is  plenty  of  new  manuscript  in  my  Borrow 
collection  to  have  made  such  a  book  possible  had 
Borrow  been  encouraged  by  his  publisher  and  the 
public  to  write  it. 

To  J.  Evan  WiUiams,  Esq. 

22  Hereford  Square,  Bkompton,  Deo:  31,  1863. 

Dear  Sir, — I  have  received  your  letter  and  thank  you  for  the 
kind  manner  in  which  you  are  pleased  to  express  yourself  concern- 

^  Mary  Botham  (1709-1888)  was  born  at  Coleford,  Gloucestershire,  and 
married  William  Howitt  in  1821.  The  pair  compiled  many  books  together. 
The  statement  in  the  Dictionary  of  National  Biography  that  '  nothing  that 
either  of  them  wrote  will  live  '  is  quite  unwarranted.  William  Howitt's 
Homes  and  Haunts  of  the  most  eminent  British  Poets  (Bentley,  2  vols.,  1847) 
is  still  eagerly  sought  after  for  every  good  library.  In  Mary  Hou;itt :  An 
Autobiography  (Isbister,  2  vols.,  1889),  a  valuable  book  of  reminiscences, 
there  is  no  mention  of  Borrow.  , 

2  a 


370    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

ing   me.     Now  for  your  questions.      With   respect  to    Lope   De 
Vega's  ghost  story,  I  beg  to  say  that  I  am  thinking  of  publishing 


5*  ^.AO-WUy 

iW^kp   Wow. 


^"^f^^^^^^K 


c^W-t/ 


FACSIMILE    OF    THE    FIRST    PAGE    OF    WILD    WALES 

From  the  original  Manuscript  in  the  possession  of  the  Author 
of  '  George  Borroxv  and  his  Circle.' 

a  supplement  to  my  Wild  Wales  in  which,  amongst  other  things, 
I  shall  give  a  full  account  of  the  tale  and  point  out  where  it  is 
to  be  found.  You  cannot  imagine  the  number  of  letters  I  receive 
on  the  subject  of  that  ghost  story.  With  regard  to  the  Sclavonian 
languages,  I  wish  to  observe  that  they  are  all  well  deserving  of 


'WILD  WALES'  371 

study.  The  Servian  and  Bohemian  contain  a  great  many  old 
traditionary  songs,  and  the  latter  possesses  a  curious  though  not 
very  extensive  prose  literature.  The  Polish  has,  I  may  say,  been 
rendered  immortal  by  the  writings  of  Mickiewicz,  whose  '  Conrad 
AVallenrod '  is  probably  the  most  remarkable  poem  of  the  present 
century.  The  Russian,  however,  is  the  most  important  of  all  the 
Sclavonian  tongues,  not  on  account  of  its  literature  but  because  it 
is  spoken  by  fifty  millions  of  people,  it  being  the  dominant  speech 
from  the  Gulf  of  Finland  to  the  frontiers  of  China.  There  is  a 
remarkable  similarity  both  in  sound  and  sense  between  many 
Russian  and  Welsh  words,  for  example  'tchehr  (qejo)  is  the 
Russian  for  forehead,  '  tal '  is  Welsh  for  the  same ;  '  iasniiy '  (neuter 
'  iasnoe')  is  the  Russian  for  clear  or  radiant,  'iesin'  the  Welsh,  so  that 
if  it  were  grammatical  in  Russian  to  place  the  adjective  after  the 
noun  as  is  the  custom  in  Welsh,  the  Welsh  compound  '  Taliesin ' 
(Radiant  forehead)  might  be  rendered  in  Russian  by  '  Tcheloiasnoe,"" 
which  would  be  wondrously  like  the  Welsh  name  ;  unfortunately, 
however,  Russian  grammar  would  compel  any  one  wishing  to 
Russianise  '  Taliesin '  to  say  not  '  Tcheloiasnoe '  but  '  lasnoetchelo."" 
— Yours  truly,  Geokge  Borrow. 

Another  letter  that  Borrow  owed  to  his  Wild 
Wales  may  well  have  place  here.  It  will  be  recalled 
that  in  his  fortieth  chapter  he  waxes  enthusiastic  over 
Lewis  INIorris,  the  AVelsh  bard,  who  was  born  in 
Anglesey  in  1700  and  died  in  1765.  Morris's  great- 
grandson,  Sir  Lewis  Morris  (1833-1907),  the  author  of 
the  once  popular  Epic  of  Hades,  was  twenty-nine  years 
of  age  when  he  wrote  to  Borrow  as  follows  : — 


To  George  Borrow,  Esq. 

Reform  Club,  Dec.  29,  1862. 

Sir, — I  have  just  finished  reading  your  work  on   Wild  Wales, 

and  cannot  refrain  from  writing  to  thank  you  for  the  very  lifelike 

picture  of  the  Welsh  people.  North  and  South,  which,  unlike  other 

Englishmen,  you  have  managed  to  give  us.     To  ordinary  English- 


372    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

men  the  language  is  of  course  an  insurmountable  bar  to  any  real 
knowledge  of  the  people,  and  the  result  is  that  within  six  hours  of 
Paddington  or  Euston  Square  is  a  country  nibbled  at  superficially 
by  droves  of  holiday-makers,  but  not  really  better  known  than 
Asia  Minor.  I  wish  it  were  possible  to  get  rid  of  all  obstacles 
which  stand  in  the  way  of  the  development  of  the  Welsh  people 
and  the  Welsh  intellect.  In  the  meantime  every  book  which  like 
yours  tends  to  lighten  the  thick  darkness  which  seems  to  hang 
round  Wales  deserves  the  acknowledgments  of  every  true  Welsh- 
man. I  am,  perhaps,  more  especially  called  upon  to  express  my 
thanks  for  the  very  high  terms  in  which  you  speak  of  my  great- 
grandfather, Lewis  Morris.  I  believe  you  have  not  said  a  word 
more  than  he  deserves.  Some  of  the  facts  which  you  mention 
with  regard  to  him  were  unknown  to  me,  and  as  I  take  a  very 
great  interest  in  everything  relating  to  my  ancestor  I  venture  to 
ask  you  whether  you  can  indicate  any  source  of  knowledge  with 
regard  to  him  and  his  wife,  other  than  those  which  I  have  at 
present — viz.  an  old  number  of  the  Cambrian  Register  and  some 
notices  of  him  in  the  Gentlemaii's  Magazine,  1760-70.  There  is 
also  a  letter  of  his  in  Lord  Teignmouth's  Life  of  Sir  William 
Jones  in  which  he  claims  kindred  with  that  great  scholar.  Many 
of  his  manuscript  poems  and  much  correspondence  are  now  in  the 
library  of  the  British  Museum,  most  of  them  I  regret  to  say  a 
sealed  book  to  one  who  like  myself  had  yet  to  learn  Welsh.  But 
I  am  not  the  less  anxious  to  learn  all  that  can  be  ascertained 
about  my  great  ancestor.  I  should  say  that  two  of  his  brothers, 
Richard  and  William,  were  eminent  Welsh  scholars. 

With  apologies  for  addressing  you  so  unceremoniously,  and 
with  renewed  thanks,  I  remain.  Sir,  your  obedient  servant, 

Lewis  Morris. 

All  interesting  letter  to  Borrow  from  another  once 
popular  writer  belongs  to  this  period  : 


To  George  Borrow,  Esq. 

The  '  Press  '  Office,  Strand,  Westminster,  Thursday. 
One  who  has  read  and  delighted  in  everything  Mr.   Borrow 


'WILD  WALES'  373 

has  yet  published  ventures  to  say  how  great  has  been  his  delight 
in  reading  Wild  Wales.  No  philologist  or  linguist,  I  am  yet  an 
untiring  walker  and  versifier :  and  really  I  think  that  few  things 
are  pleasanter  than  to  walk  and  to  versify.  Also,  well  do  I  lore 
good  ale,  natural  drink  of  the  English.  If  I  could  envy  anything, 
it  is  your  linguistic  faculty,  which  unlocks  to  you  the  hearts  of  the 
unknown  races  of  these  islands — unknown,  I  mean,  as  to  their  real 
feelings  and  habits,  to  ordinary  Englishmen — and  your  still  higher 
faculty  of  describing  your  adventures  in  the  purest  and  raciest 
English  of  the  day.  I  send  you  a  Danish  daily  journal,  which 
you  may  not  have  seen.  Once  a  week  it  issues  articles  in  English. 
How  beautiful  (but  of  course  not  new  to  you)  is  the  legend  of 
Queen  Dagmar,  given  in  this  number  !  A  noble  race,  the  Danes  : 
glad  am  I  to  see  their  blood  about  to  refresh  that  which  runs  in 
the  royal  veins  of  England.  Sorry  and  ashamed  to  see  a  Russell 
bullying  and  insulting  them.  Moktimeh  Collins.^ 

How  greatly  Borrow  was  disappointed  at  the  com- 
parative failure  of  fVild  Wales  may  be  gathered  from  a 
curt  message  to  his  publisher  which  I  find  among  his 
papers : 

Mr.  Borrow  has  been  applied  to  by  a  country  bookseller,  who 
is  desirous  of  knowing  why  there  is  not  another  edition  of  Wild 
Wales,  as  he  cannot  procure  a  copy  of  the  book,  for  which  he  receives 
frequent  orders.  That  it  was  not  published  in  a  cheap  form  as 
soon  as  the  edition  of  1862  was  exhausted  has  caused  much 
surprise. 

Borrow,  it  will  be  remembered,  left  Wales  at 
Chepstow,  as  recorded  in  the  hundred  and  ninth  and 
final  chapter  of  JVild  Wales,  '  where  I  purchased  a  first 
class  ticket,  and  ensconcing  myself  in  a  comfortable 
carriage,  was  soon  on  my  way  to  London,  where  I 
arrived  at  about  four  o'clock  in  the  morning.'     In  the 

1  Edward  James  Mortimer  Collins  (1827-1870),  once  bore  the  title  of 
'King  of  the  Bohemians' among  his  friends;  wrote  Sweet  and  Twenty  and. 
many  other  novels  once  widely  popular. 


374    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

following  letter  to  his  wife  there  is  a  slight  discrepancy, 
of  no  importance,  as  to  time  : 


To  Mrs.  George  Borrow 

63a  Pall  Mall,  London. 

Dear  Wife  Carreta, — I  arrived  here  about  five  o'clock  this 
morning — time  I  saw  you.  I  have  walked  about  250  miles.  I  walked 
the  whole  way  from  the  North  to  the  South — then  turning  to  the 
East  traversed  Glamorganshire  and  the  county  of  Monmouth,  and 
came  out  at  Chepstow.  My  boots  were  worn  up  by  the  time  I 
reached  Swansea,  and  was  obliged  to  get  them  new  soled  and 
welted.  I  have  seen  wonderful  mountains,  waterfalls,  and  people. 
On  the  other  side  of  the  Black  Mountains  I  met  a  cartload  of 
gypsies ;  they  were  in  a  dreadful  rage  and  were  abusing  the  country 
right  and  left.  My  last  ninety  miles  proved  not  very  comfortable, 
there  was  so  much  rain.  Pray  let  me  have  some  money  by 
Monday  as  I  am  nearly  without  any,  as  you  may  well  suppose,  for 
I  was  three  weeks  on  my  journey.  I  left  you  on  a  Thursday,  and 
reached  Chepstow  yesterday,  Thursday,  evening.  I  hope  you,  my 
mother,  and  Hen.  are  well.  I  have  seen  Murray  and  Cooke. — 
God  bless  you,  yours,  George  Borrow. 

(Keep  this.) 

Before  Borrow  put  the  finishing  touches  to  JVild 
Wales  he  repeated  his  visit  of  1854.  This  was  in  1857, 
the  year  of  The  Romany  Rye.  Dr.  Knapp  records  the 
fact  through  a  letter  to  Mr.  John  Murray  from  Shrews- 
bury, in  which  he  discusses  the  possibility  of  a  second 
edition  of  2'he  Romany  Rye  :  '  I  have  lately  been  taking 
a  walk  in  Wales  of  upwards  of  five  hundred  miles,'  he 
writes.  This  tour  lasted  from  August  23rd  to  October 
5th.  I  find  four  letters  to  his  wife  that  were  written 
in  this  holiday.  He  does  not  seem  to  have  made  any 
use  of  this  second  tour  in  his  Wild  Wales,  although  I 
have  abundance  of  manuscript  notes  upon  it  in  my 
possession. 


'WILD  WALES'  375 

To  Mrs.  George  Borrow 

TenbYj  Tuesday,  25. 
My  dear  Caureta, — Since  writing  to  you  I  have  been  rather 
unwell  and  was  obliged  to  remain  two  days  at  Sandypool.     The 
weather  has  been  horribly  hot  and  affected  my  head  and  likewise 
my  sight  slightly ;  moreover  one  of  the  shoes  hurt  my  foot.     I 
came  to  this  place  to-day  and  shall  presently  leave  it  for  Pembroke 
on  my  way  back.     I  shall  write  to  you  from  there.     I  shall  return 
by  Cardigan.     What  I  want  you  to  do  is  to  write  to  me  directed  to 
the  post  office,  Cardigan  (in  Cardiganshire),  and  either  inclose  a  post 
office  order  for  five  pounds  or  an  order  from  Lloyd  and  Co.  on  the 
banker  of  that  place  for  the  same  sum  ;  but  at  any  rate  write  or  I 
shall  not  know  what  to  do.     I  would  return  by  railroad,  but  in 
that  event  I  must  go  to  London,  for  there  are  no  railroads  from 
here  to  Shrewsbury.     I  wish  moreover  to  see  a  little  more.     Just 
speak  to  the  banker  and  don't  lose  any  time.     Send  letter,  and 
either  order  in  it,  or  say  that  I  can  get  it  at  the  bankers.     I  hope 
all  is  well.     God  bless  you  and  Hen.  George  Borrow. 


To  Mrs.  George  Borrow 

Trecastle,  Brecknockshire,  South  Wales,  August  17th. 

Dear  Carreta, — I  write  to  you  a  few  words  from  this  place ;  to- 
morrow I  am  going  to  Llandovery  and  from  there  to  Carmarthen  ; 
for  the  first  three  or  four  days  I  had  dreadful  weather.  I  got 
only  to  Worthen  the  first  day,  twelve  miles — on  the  next  to 
Montgomery,  and  so  on.  It  is  now  very  hot,  but  I  am  very  well, 
much  better  than  at  Shrewsbury.  I  hope  in  a  few  days  to  write 
to  you  again,  and  soon  to  be  back  to  you.  God  bless  you  and 
Hen.  G.  Borrow, 


To  Mrs.  George  Borrow 

Lampeter,  3rd  September  1857. 
My   dear   Carreta, — I   am   making  the  best  of  my  way  to 
Shrewsbury  (My  face  is  turned  towards  Mama).     I  write  this  from 


376    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HTS  CIRCLE 

Ijampeter,  wliere  there  is  a  college  for  educating  clergymen 
intended  for  Wales,  which  I  am  going  to  see.  I  shall  then  start 
for  Bad  nor  by  Tregaron,  and  hope  soon  to  be  in  England.  I 
have  seen  an  enormous  deal  since  I  have  been  away,  and  have 
walked  several  hundred  miles.  Amongst  other  places  I  have  seen 
St.  David's,  a  wonderful  half  ruinous  cathedral  on  the  S.  Western 
end  of  Pembrokeshire,  but  I  shall  be  glad  to  get  back.  God  bless 
you  and  Hen.  George  Borrow, 

Henrietta  !     Do  you  know  who  is  handsome .'' 


To  Mrs.  George  Borrow 

Presteyne,  Radnorshire,  Monday  morning. 

Dear  Carreta, — I  am  just  going  to  start  for  Ludlow,  and 
hope  to  be  at  Shrewsbury  on  Tuesday  night  if  not  on  Monday 
morning.     God  bless  you  and  Hen.  G.  Borrow. 

When  I  get  back  I  shall  have  walked  more  than  400  miles. 

In  Wild  JVahs  we  have  George  Borrow  in  his 
most  genial  mood.  There  are  none  of  the  hair- 
breadth escapes  and  grim  experiences  of  The  Bible  in 
Spain,  none  of  the  romance  and  the  glamour  of 
Lavengi^o  and  its  sequel,  but  there  is  good  humour, 
a  humour  that  does  not  obtain  in  the  three  more 
important  works,  and  there  is  an  amazing  amount  of 
frank  candour  of  a  biographical  kind.  We  even  have 
a  reference  to  Isopel  Berners,  referred  to  by  Captain 
Bosvile  as  '  the  young  woman  you  used  to  keep 
company  with  ...  a  fine  young  woman  and  a 
virtuous.'  It  is  the  happiest  of  Borrow's  books,  and 
not  unnaturally.  He  was  having  a  genuine  holiday, 
and  lie  had  the  companionship  during  a  part  of  it  of  his 
wife  and  daughter,  of  whom  he  was,  as  this  book  is 
partly  written  to  prove,  very  genuinely  fond.  He 
also   enjoyed   the    singularly   felicitous    experience    of 


'WILD  WALES'  377 

Imrking  back  upon  some  of  his  earliest  memories.  He 
was  able  to  retrace  the  steps  he  took  in  the  Welsh 
language  during  his  boyhood  : 

That  night  I  sat  up  very  late  reading  the  life  of  Twm 
O'r  Nant,  written  by  himself  in  choice  Welsh.  .  .  .  The  life  I  had 
read  in  my  boyhood  in  an  old  Welsh  magazine,  and  I  now  read  it 
again  with  great  zest,  and  no  wonder,  as  it  is  probably  the  most 
remarkable  autobiography  ever  penned. 

It  is  in  this  ecstatic  mood  that  he  passes  through 
Wales.  Let  me  recall  the  eulogy  on  '  Gronwy ' 
Owen,  and  here  it  may  be  said  that  Borrow  rarely  got 
his  spelling  correct  of  the  proper  names  of  his  various 
literary  heroes,  in  the  various  Norse  and  Celtic  tongues 
in  which  he  delighted.^  But  how  much  Borrow 
delighted  in  his  poets  may  be  seen  by  his  eulogy  on 
Goronwy  Owen,  which  in  its  pathos  recalls  Carlyle's 
similar  eulogies  over  poor  German  scholars  who  inter- 
ested him,  Jean  Paul  Richter  and  Heyne,  for  example. 
Borrow  ignored  Owen's  persistent  intemperance  and 
general  impracticability.  Here  and  here  only,  indeed, 
does  he  remind  one  of  Carlyle.^  He  had  a  great  capacity 
for  hero-worship,  although  the  two  were  not  interested 
in  the  same  heroes.  His  hero-worship  of  Owen  took  him 
over  large  tracks  of  country  in  search  of  that  poet's 

1  Goronwy  or  Gronow  Owen  (1723-17G9),  born  at  Rhos  Fawr  in  Anglesey, 
and  died  at  St.  Andrews,  Brunswick  County,  Virginia. 

2  Borrow  had  at  many  points  certain  affinities  to  Carlyle's  hero  Johnson, 
hut  lacked  his  epigrammatic  wit — and  much  else.  But  he  seems  to  have  desired 
to  emulate  Johnson  in  one  particular,  as  we  find  in  the  following  dialogue : — 

'  I  wouldn't  go  on  foot  there  this  night  for  fifty  pounds.' 

'Why  not?' said  I. 

'For  fear  of  being  knocked  down  by  the  colliers,  who  will  be  all  out  and 
drunk.' 

'  If  not  more  than  two  attack  me,'  said  I,  '  I  shan't  so  much  mind.  With 
this  book  I  am  sure  I  can  knock  down  one,  and  I  think  I  can  find  play  for 
the  other  with  my  fists.' 


378    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

birthplace.  He  writes  of  the  delight  he  takes  in  inspect- 
ing the  birth-places  and  haunts  of  poets.  '  It  is  because 
I  am  fond  of  poetry,  poets,  and  their  haunts,  that  I  am 
come  to  Anglesey.'^  '  I  proceeded  on  my  way,'  he  says 
elsewhere,  'in  high  spirits  indeed,  having  now  seen  not 
only  the  tomb  of  the  Tudors,  but  one  of  those  sober 
poets  for  which  Anglesey  has  always  been  so  famous.' 
And  thus  it  is  that  JFild  Wales  is  a  high-spirited  book, 
which  will  always  be  a  delight  and  a  joy  not  only  to 
Welshmen,  who,  it  may  be  hoped,  have  by  this  time 
forgiven  '  the  ecclesiastical  cat '  of  Llangollen,  but  to 
all  who  rejoice  in  the  great  classics  of  the  English 
tongue. 

*  When  searching  for  the  home  of  Goronwy  Owen  Borrow  records  a 
meeting  with  one  of  his  descendants — a  little  girl  of  seven  or  eight  years  of 
age,  named  Ellen  Jones,  who  in  recent  years  has  been  interviewed  as  to  her 
impressions  of  Borrow's  visit.  '  He  did  speak  funny  Welsh,'  she  says, 
'.  .  .  he  could  not  pronounce  the  "  11."  He  had  plenty  of  words,  but  bad 
pronunciation.' — Herbert  Jenkins  :  Life  of  Borrow,  p.  418.     But  Borrow  in 

Wild    Wales  frequently  admits    his   imperfect    acquaintance   with    spoken 

Welsh. 


CHAPTER    XXXIII 

LIFE  IN  LONDON,  1860-1874. 

George  Borrow's  earlier  visits  to  London  are  duly 
recorded,  with  that  glamour  of  which  he  was  a  master, 
in  the  pages  of  Lavengro.  Wiio  can  cross  London 
Bridge  even  to-day  without  thinking  of  the  apple- 
woman  and  her  copy  of  Moll  Flanders  \  and  many 
passages  of  Borrow's  great  book  make  a  very  special 
appeal  to  the  lover  of  London.  Then  there  was  that 
visit  to  the  Bible  Society's  office  made  on  foot  from 
Norwich,  and  the  expedition  a  few  months  later  to 
pass  an  examination  in  the  Manchu  language.  When 
he  became  a  country  squire  and  the  author  of  the  very 
successful  Bible  in  Spain  Borrow  frequently  visited 
London,  and  his  various  residences  may  be  traced  from 
his  letters.  Take,  for  example,  these  five  notes  to 
his  wife,  the  first  apparently  written  in  1848,  but  all 
undated : 

To  Mrs.  George  Borrow 

Tueaday  afternoon. 

My  dear  Wife, — I  just  write  you  a  line  to  tell  you  that  I  am 
tolerably  well  as  I  hope  you  are.  Every  thing  is  in  confusion 
abroad.  The  French  King  has  disappeared  and  will  probably 
never  be  heard  of,  though  they  are  expecting  him  in  England. 
Funds  are  down  nearly  to  eighty.  The  Government  have  given 
up  the  income  tax  and   people  are  very  glad  of   it.     /  am  not. 

379 


380    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

With  respect  to  the  funds,  if  I  were  to  sell  out  I  should  not  know 
what  to  do  with  the  money.  J.  says  they  will  rise.  I  do  not 
think  they  will,  they  may,  however,  fluctuate  a  little. — Keep  up 
your  spirits,  my  heart's  dearest,  and  kiss  old  Hen.  for  me. 

G.  B. 

To  Mrs.  George  Borrow 

53a,  Pall  Mall. 
Dear  Wife  Carreta, — I  write  you  a  line  as  I  suppose  you 
will  be  glad  to  have  one.  I  dine  to-night  with  Murray  and 
Cooke,  and  we  are  going  to  talk  over  about  The  Sleeping  Bard ; 
both  are  very  civil.  I  have  been  reading  hard  at  the  Museum  and 
have  lost  no  time.  Yesterday  I  went  to  Greenwich  to  see  the 
Leviathan.  It  is  almost  terrible  to  look  at,  and  seems  too  large 
for  the  river.  It  resembles  a  floating  town — the  paddle  is  60  feet 
high.  A  tall  man  can  stand  up  in  the  funnel  as  it  lies  down.  'Tis 
sad,  however,  that  money  is  rather  scarce.  I  walked  over  Black- 
heath  and  thought  of  poor  dear  Mrs.  Watson.  I  have  just  had  a 
note  from  FitzGerald.  We  have  had  some  rain  but  not  very 
much.  London  is  very  gloomy  in  rainy  weather.  I  was  hoping 
that  I  should  have  a  letter  from  you  this  morning.  I  hope  you 
and  Hen.  have  been  well. — God  bless  you, 

George  Borrow. 

To  Mrs.  George  Borrow 

Pall  Mall,  53a,  Saturday. 
Dear  Carreta, — I  am  thinking  of  coming  to  you  on  Thursday. 
I  do  not  know  that  I  can  do  anything  more  here,  and  the  dulness 
of  the  weather  and  the  mists  are  making  me  ill.  Please  to  send 
another  five  pound  note  by  Tuesday  morning.  I  have  spent 
scarcely  anything  of  that  which  you  sent  except  what  I  owe  to 
Mrs.  W.,  but  I  wish  to  have  money  in  my  pocket,  and  Murray 
and  Cooke  are  going  to  dine  with  me  on  Tuesday;  I  shall  be  glad 
to  be  with  you  again,  for  I  am  very  much  in  want  of  your  society. 
I  miss  very  much  my  walks  at  Llangollen  by  the  quiet  canal ;  but 
what's  to  be  done?  Everything  seems  nearly  at  a  standstill  in 
London,  on  account  of  this  wretched  war,  at  which  it  appears  to 
me    the    English    are   getting   the    worst,  notwithstanding   their 


LIFE  IN  LONDON,  1860-1874  381 

boasting.  They  thought  to  settle  it  in  an  autumn's  day ;  they 
little  knew  the  Russians,  and  they  did  not  reflect  that  just  after 
autumn  comes  winter,  which  has  ever  been  the  Russians'  friend. 
Have  you  heard  anything  about  the  rent  of  the  Cottage  ?  I 
should  have  been  glad  to  hear  from  you  this  morning.  Give  my 
love  to  Hen.  and  may  God  bless  you,  dear. 

(Keep  this.)  Geoege  Bokrow. 

To  Mrs.  George  Borrow 

No.  63a  Pall  Mall. 

Dear  Carreta, — I  hope  you  received  my  last  letter  written 
on  Tuesday.  I  am  glad  that  I  came  to  London.  I  find  myself 
much  the  better  for  having  done  so.  I  was  going  on  in  a  very 
spiritless  manner.  Everybody  I  have  met  seems  very  kind  and 
glad  to  see  me.  Murray  seems  to  be  thoroughly  staunch.  Cooke, 
to  whom  I  mentioned  the  F.T.,  says  that  Murray  was  delighted 
with  the  idea,  and  will  be  very  glad  of  the  4th  of  Lavengro.  I 
am  going  to  dine  with  Murray  to-day,  Thursday.  W.  called 
upon  me  to-day.  I  wish  you  would  send  me  a  blank  cheque,  in  a 
letter  so  that  if  I  want  money  I  may  be  able  to  draw  for  a  little. 
I  shall  not  be  long  from  home,  but  now  I  am  here  I  wish  to  do 
all  that's  necessary.  If  you  send  me  a  blank  cheque,  I  suppose 
W.  or  Murray  would  give  me  the  money.  I  hope  you  got  my 
last  letter.  I  received  yours,  and  Cooke  has  just  sent  the  two 
copies  of  Lavengro  you  wrote  for,  and  I  believe  some  engravings 
of  the  picture.  I  shall  wish  to  return  by  the  packet  if  possible, 
and  will  let  you  know  when  I  am  coming.  I  hope  to  write  again 
shortly  to  tell  you  some  more  news.  How  is  mother  and  Hen., 
and  how  are  all  the  creatures  ?  I  hope  all  well.  I  trust  you  like 
all  I  propose — now  I  am  here  I  want  to  get  two  or  three  things, 
to  go  to  the  Museum,  and  to  arrange  matters.  God  bless  you. 
Love  to  mother  and  Hen.  George  Borrow. 


To  Mrs.  George  Borrow 

No.  58  Jermyn  Street,  St.  James. 
Dear  Carreta, — I  got  here  safe,  and  upon  the  whole  had  not 


382    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

so  bad  a  journey  as  might  be  expected.  I  put  up  at  the  Spread 
Eagle  for  the  night  for  I  was  tired  and  hungry  ;  have  got  into 
my  old  lodgings  as  you  see,  those  on  the  second  floor,  they  are 
very  nice  ones,  with  every  convenience ;  they  are  expensive,  it  is 
true,  but  they  are  cheerful,  which  is  a  grand  consideration  for  me. 
I  have  as  yet  seen  nobody,  for  it  is  only  now  a  little  past  eleven. 
I  can  scarcely  at  present  tell  you  what  my  plans  are,  perhaps 
to-morrow  I  shall  write  again.     Kiss  Hen.,  and  God  bless  you. 

G.B. 

It  was  in  the  year  184f3  that  Borrow,  on  a  visit  to 
London  following  upon  the  success  of  IVie  Bible  in 
Spain,  sat  to  Henry  Wyndham  Phillips  for  his  portrait 
at  the  instigation  of  Mr.  Murray,  who  gave  Borrow  a 
replica,  retaining  for  himself  Phillips's  more  finished 
picture,  which  has  been  reproduced  again  and  again  in 
the  present  Mr.  Murray's  Borrow  productions.^ 

Borrow  was  in  London  in  1845  and  again  in  1848. 
There  must  have  been  other  occasional  visits  on  the 
way  to  this  or  that  starting  point  of  his  annual  holiday, 
but  in  1860  Borrow  took  a  house  in  London,  and  he 
resided  there  until  1874,  when  he  returned  to  Oulton. 
In  a  letter  to  Mr.  John  Murray,  written  from  Ireland 

^  Tlie  frontispiece  to  the  present  volume  is  from  the  replica  in  the 
possession  of  Borrow's  executor,  who  has  kindly  permitted  me  to  have  it 
photographed  for  the  purpose.  There  are  slight  and  interesting  variations 
from  Mr.  Murray's  portrait.  Phillips  (1820-1868),  the  artist  of  these  pictures, 
is  often  confused  with  his  father,  Thomas  (1770-1845),  the  Royal  Academician 
and  a  much  superior  painter,  who,  by  the  way,  painted  many  portraits  of 
authors  for  Mr.  John  Murray.  Henry  Phillips  was  never  an  R.  A.  A  letter 
from  Phillips  to  Borrow  in  my  possession  shows  that  he  visited  the  latter  at 
Oulton.  The  portrait  of  Borrow  is  pronounced  by  Henry  Dalrymple,  his 
schoolfellow,  from  whose  manuscript  we  have  already  quoted,  to  be  ^  very 
like  him.'  This  fact  is  the  more  remarkable  as  the  only  photograph  of 
Borrow  that  is  known,  one  taken  in  a  group  with  Mrs.  Simms  Reeve  of 
Norwich  in  1848 — five  years  later — has  many  points  of  difference.  The 
reader  will  here  be  able  to  compare  the  two  portraits  in  this  book.  A  third 
portrait  of  Borrow — a  crude  painting  by  his  brother  John  taken  in  his  early 
years,  is  now  in  the  London  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


IJFE   IN  LONDON,  1860-1874  383 

ill  November  1859,  INIrs.  Borrow  writes  to  the  effect 
that  in  the  spring  of  the  following  year  she  will  wish 
to  look  round  *and  select  a  pleasant  holiday  residence 
within  three  to  ten  miles  of  London,'  There  is  no 
doubt  that  a  succession  of  winters  on  Oulton  Broad 
had  been  very  detrimental  to  Mrs.  Borrow's  health, 
although  they  had  no  effect  upon  Borrow,  who 
bathed  there  with  equal  indifference  in  winter  as  in 
summer,  having,  as  he  tells  us  in  IVild  Wales,  '  always 
had  the  health  of  an  elephant.'  And  so  Borrow  and  his 
wife  arrived  in  London  in  June,  and  took  temporary 
lodgings  at  21  Montagu  Street,  Portman  Square.  In 
September  they  went  into  occupation  of  a  house  in 
Brompton — 22  Hereford  Square,  which  is  now  com- 
memorated by  a  County  Council  tablet.  Here  Borrow 
resided  for  fourteen  years,  and  here  his  wife  died  on 
January  30,  1869.  She  was  buried  in  Brompton 
Cemetery,  where  Borrow  was  laid  beside  her  twelve 
years  later.  For  neighbour,  on  the  one  side,  the  Bor- 
rows had  Mr.  Robert  Collinson  and,  on  the  other, 
Miss  Frances  Power  Cobbe  and  her  companion,  Miss 
M.  C.  Lloyd.  From  Miss  Cobbe  we  have  occasional 
glimpses  of  Borrow,  all  of  them  unkindly.  She  was  of 
Irish  extraction,  her  father  having  been  grandson  of 
Charles  Cobbe,  Archbishop  of  Dublin.  Miss  Cobbe  was 
an  active  woman  in  all  kinds  of  journalistic  and  philan- 
thropic enterprises  in  the  London  of  the  'seventies  and 
'eighties  of  the  last  century,  writing  in  particular  in  the 
now  defunct  newspaper,  the  Echo,  and  she  wrote 
dozens  of  books  and  pamphlets,  all  of  them  forgotten 
except  her  Autobiogi^aphy,^  in  which  she  devoted  several 

1  Life  of  Frances  Power  Cobbe  as  told  by  Herself.  A\"ith  Additions  by  the 
Writer  and  Introduction  by  Blanche  Atkinson.  2  vols. ,  1904.  Frances  Power 
Cobbe  was  born  in  Dublin  in  1822,  and  died  at  Hengwrt  in  1904. 


384    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

pages  to  her  neighbour  in  Hereford  Square.  Borrow 
had  no  sympathy  with  fanatical  women  with  many 
'isms,'  and  the  pair  did  not  agree,  although  many 
neighbourly  courtesies  passed  between  them  for  a  time. 
Here  is  an  extract  from  Miss  Cobbe's  Autobiogi^aphy : 

George  Borrow,  who,  if  he  were  not  a  gypsy  by  blood,  ought 
to  have  been  one,  was  for  some  years  our  near  neighbour  in  Here- 
ford Square.  My  friend  ^  was  amused  by  his  quaint  stories  and 
his  (real  or  sham)  enthusiasm  for  Wales,  and  cultivated  his 
acquaintance.  I  never  liked  him,  thinking  him  more  or  less  of  a 
hypocrite.  His  missions,  recorded  in  The  Bible  in  Spain,  and  his 
translations  of  the  Scriptures  into  the  out-of-the-way  tongues,  for 
which  he  had  a  gift,  were  by  no  means  consonant  Avith  his  real 
opinions  concerning  the  veracity  of  the  said  Bible. 

One  only  needs  to  quote  this  by  the  light  of  the 
story  as  told  so  far  in  these  pages  to  see  how  entirely 
Miss  Cobbe  misunderstood  Borrow,  or  rather  how  little 
insight  she  was  able  to  bring  to  a  study  of  his  curious 
character.  The  rest  of  her  attempt  at  interpretation  is 
largely  taken  up  to  demonstrate  how  much  more  clever 
and  more  learned  she  was  than  Borrow.  Altogether  it 
is  a  sorry  spectacle  this  of  the  pseudo-philanthropist 
relating  her  conversations  with  a  man  broken  by  mis- 
fortune and  the  death  of  his  wife.  Many  of  Miss 
Cobbe's  statements  have  passed  into  current  biographies 
and  have  doubtless  found  acceptance.^     I  do  not  find 

'  Miss  Lloyd,  who  was  a  Welshwoman.  Miss  Cobbe  lived  with  her  and 
was  doubtless  a  jealous  woman.  There  are  many  kindly  letters  from  Miss 
Lloyd  to  Borrow  in  my  collection.  She  seems  always  to  be  anxious  to  invite 
him  to  her  house. 

^  About  three  months  before  her  death  Miss  Cobbe  replied  to  an  inquiry 
made  by  Mr.  James  Hooper  of  Norwich  concerning  her  estimate  of  Borrow. 
As  it  is  all  but  certain  that  Borrow  was  never  intoxicated  in  his  life^  we 
may  find  the  letter  of  interest  onl)'  as  giving  a  point  of  view  : 

'  HengwbTj  Dolgelley,  N.  Wales,  Jan.  26,  1904. 
*I  can  have  no  objection  to  your  asking  me  if  my  little  sketch  of  George 


LIFE  IN  LONDON,  1860-1874  385 

them  convincing.  Archdeacon  Whately  on  the  other 
hand  tells  us  that  he  always  found  Borrow  '  most  civil 
and  hospitable,'  and  his  sister  gives  us  the  following 
*  imnression ' : 


*  impression 


When  Mr.  Borrow  returned  from  this  Spanish  journey,  which 
had  been  full,  as  we  all  know,  of  most  entertaining  adventures, 
related  with  much  liveliness  and  spirit  by  himself,  he  was  regarded 
as  a  kind  of  '  lion '  in  the  literary  circles  of  London.  When  we 
first  saw  him  it  was  at  the  house  of  a  lady  who  took  great  pleasure 
in  gathering  'celebrities'"  in  various  ways  around  her,  and  our 
party  was  struck  with  the  appearance  of  this  renowned  traveller — 
a  tall,  thin,  spare  man  with  prematurely  white  hair  and  intensely 
dark  eyes,  as  he  stood  upright  against  the  wall  of  one  of  the 
drawing-rooms  and  received  the  homage  of  lion-hunting  guests, 
and  listened  in  silence  to  their  unsuccessful  attempts  to  make  him 
talk.'i 

Another   reminiscence    of    Borrow   in    London   is 
furnished  by  Mr.  A.  T.  Story,  who  writes  :  ^ 

I  had  the  pleasure  of  meeting  Borrow  on  several  occasions  in 
London  some  forty  years  ago.     I  cannot  be  quite  certain  of  the 


Borrow  in  my  Life  is  my  dernier  mot  about  him.  If  I  were  to  give  my  dernier 
mot,  it  would  be  much  more  to  his  disadvantage  than  anything  I  liked  to  in- 
sert in  my  biography.  I  see  his  American  biographer  has  accused  me  of 
'  bitterness.'  I  do  not  think  that  what  is  contained  in  my  book  is  '  bitter'  at 
all.  But  if  1  were  to  have  told  my  last  interview  with  him, — when  I  was 
driven  practically  to  drive  him  out  of  our  house,  more  or  less  drunk,  or  mad 
with  some  opiate — the  charge  might  have  had  some  colour.  He  was  not  a 
good  man,  and  not  a  true  or  honourable  one,  by  any  manner  of  means.' 

Here  assuredly  we  miss  the  hne  charity  which  led  Goethe's  friend,  the 
Duchess  of  Weimar,  to  urge  that  there  was  a  special  moral  law  for  poets. 
Not  for  one  moment  does  it  occur  to  Miss  Cobbe  that  her  neighbour  was  a 
man  of  genius  who  had  written  four  imperishable  contributions  to  English 
literature.  To  her  he  was  merely  a  conceited,  brusque  old  man.  Concern- 
ing the  adage  that  '  no  man  is  a  hero  to  his  valet,'  well  may  Carlyle  remark 
that  that  is  more  often  the  fault  of  the  valet  than  of  the  hero. 

1  Personal  and  Family  Glimpses  of  Remarkable  People.  By  Edward  W. 
Whately.     London  :  Hodder  and  Stoughton,  1889. 

'^  Loudon  Daily  Chronicle,  July  9,  1913. 

2b 


886    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

year,  but  I  think  it  was  either  in  1872  or  '73.  I  saw  him  first  in 
James  Burns's  publishing  office  in  Southampton  Row.  I  happened 
to  call  just  as  a  tall,  strongly-built  man  with  an  unforgettable 
face  was  leaving.  When  he  had  gone,  Mr.  Burns  asked  :  '  Do  you 
know  who  that  gentleman  was  ? '  and  when  I  said  I  did  not,  he  said : 
'  He  is  the  man  whose  book.  The  Bible  in  Spain,  I  saw  you  take 
down  from  the  shelf  there  the  other  day  and  read.'  '  What,  George 
Borrow  ? '  I  exclaimed.  He  nodded,  and  then  said  Borrow  had 
called  several  times. 

A  few  days  later  I  had  an  opportunity  of  making  the  good 
man's  acquaintance  and  hearing  a  conversation  between  him  and 
Mr.  Burns.  They  talked  about  Spiritualism,  with  which  Borrow 
had  very  little  patience,  though,  after  some  talk  he  consented  to 
attend  a  seance  to  be  held  that  evening  in  Burns's  drawing-room. 
We  sat  together,  and  I  had  the  pleasure  of  hearing  from  time  to 
time  his  grunts  of  disapproval.  When  the  discourse — '  in  trance ' — 
was  over,  he  asked  me  if  I  believed  in  'this  sort  of  thing,'  and  when 
I  said  I  was  simply  an  investigator  he  remarked,  'That's  all  right, 
I,  too,  am  an  investigator— of  things  in  general — and  it  would  not 
take  me  long  to  sum  up  that  little  man  (the  medium)  as  a  hum- 
bug, but  a  very  clever  humbug.' 

That  evening  I  had  a  long  walk  and  a  talk  with  him,  and  after 
that  several  other  opportunities  of  talk,  the  last  being  one  night 
when  I  chanced  upon  him  on  Westminster  Bridge.  It  was  a 
superb  starlight  night,  and  he  was  standing  about  midway  over 
the  bridge  gazing  down  into  the  river.  When  I  approached  him 
he  said  :  '  I  have  been  standing  here  for  twenty  minutes  looking 
round  and  meditating.  There  is  not  another  city  like  this  in  the 
world,  nor  another  bridge  like  this,  nor  a  river,  nor  a  Parliament 
House  like  that — with  its  little  men  making  little  laws — which 
the  Lawgiver  that  made  yonder  stars — look  at  them  ! — is  con- 
tinually confounding — and  will  confound.  O,  we  little  men  !  How 
long  before  we  are  dust  ?  And  the  stars  there,  how  they  smile  at 
our  puny  lives  and  tricks — here  to-day,  gone  to-morrow.  And 
yet  to-night  how  glorious  it  is  to  be  here  ! ' 

So  he  rhapsodised.  And  then  it  was,  '  Where  can  we  get  a 
bite  and  sup  ?  I  've  been  footing  it  all  day  among  the  hills  there 
— the  Surrey  Hills — for  a  breath  of  fresh  air.' 

In  appearance,  at  the  time  I  knew  him,  Borrow  was  neither 


LIFE  IN  LONDON,  1860-1874  387 

thin  nor  stout,  but  well  proportioned  and  apparently   of  great 
strength. 

During  this  sojourn  in  London,  which  was  under- 
taken because  O niton  and  Yarmouth  did  not  agree 
with  his  wife.  Borrow  suffered  the  tragedy  of  her  loss. 
Borrow  dragged  on  his  existence  in  London  for  another 
five  years,  a  much  broken  man.  It  is  extraordinary 
how  little  we  know  of  Borrow  during  that  fourteen 
years'  sojourn  in  London ;  how  rarely  we  meet  him  in  the 
literary  memoirs  of  this  period.  Happily  one  or  two 
pleasant  friendships  reUeved  the  sadness  of  his  days ; 
and  in  particular  the  reminiscences  of  Walter  Theodore 
Watts-Dunton  assist  us  to  a  more  correct  appreciation 
of  the  Borrow  of  these  last  years  of  London  life.  Of 
Mr.  Watts-Dunton 's  '  memories,'  we  shall  write  in 
our  next  chapter.  Here  it  remains  only  to  note  that 
Borrow  still  continued  to  interest  himself  in  his  various 
efforts  at  translation,  and  in  1861  and  1862  the  editor  of 
Once  a  Week  printed  various  ballads  and  stories  from  his 
pen.  The  volumes  of  this  periodical  are  before  me,  and  I 
find  illustrations  by  Sir  John  Millais,  Sir  E.  J.  Poynter, 
Simeon  Solomon  and  George  Du  Maurier ;  stories  by 
Mrs.  Henry  Wood  and  Harriet  Martineau,  and  articles 
by  Walter  Thornbury. 

In  1862  Wild  Wales  was  published,  as  we  have  seen. 
In  1865  Henrietta  married  William  MacOubrey,  and  in 
the  following  year,  Borrow  and  his  wife  went  to  visit 
the  pair  in  their  Belfast  home.  In  the  beginning  of  the 
year  1869  Mrs.  Borrow  died,  aged  seventy-three. 
There  are  few  records  of  the  tragedy  that  are  worth 
perpetuating.^  Borrow  consumed  his  own  smoke. 
With  his   wife's  death  his  life  was  indeed  a  wreck. 

^  There  is  an  interview  between  Borrow  and  his  wife's  medical  attendant. 
Dr.  Playfair,  recorded  in  Herbert  Jenkins's  Life,  that  is  full  of  poignancy. 


388    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

No  wonder  he  was  so  'rude'  to  that  least  perceptive 
of  women,  Miss  Cobbe.  Some  four  or  five  years  more 
Borrow  lingered  on  in  London,  cheered  at  times  by 
walks  and  talks  with  Gordon  Hake  and  Watts-Dunton, 
and  he  then  returned   to   Oulton — a   most  friendless 


man:- 


What  land  has  let  the  dreamer  from  its  gateSj 
What  face  beloved  hides  from  him  away  ? 

A  dreamer  outcast  from  some  world  of  dreams, 
He  goes  for  ever  lonely  on  his  way. 

Like  a  great  pine  upon  some  Alpine  height, 
Torn  by  the  winds  and  bent  beneath  the  snow 

Half  overthrown  by  icy  avalanche. 

The  lone  of  soul  throughout  the  world  must  go. 

Alone  among  his  kind  he  stands  alone. 

Torn  by  the  passions  of  his  own  strange  heart. 

Stoned  by  continual  wreckage  of  his  dreams, 
He  in  the  crowd  for  ever  is  apart. 

Like  the  great  pine  that,  rocking  no  sweet  rest, 
Swings  no  young  birds  to  sleep  upon  the  bough, 

But  where  the  raven  only  comes  to  croak — 

'  There  lives  no  man  more  desolate  than  thou  ! ' 


CHAPTER    XXXIV 

FRIENDS  OF  LATER  YEARS 

We  should  know  little  enough  of  George  Borrow's 
later  years,  were  it  not  for  his  friendship  with  Thomas 
Gordon  Hake  and  Theodore  Watts-Dunton.  Hake 
was  born  in  1809  and  died  in  1895.  In  1839  he  settled 
at  Bury  St.  Edmunds  as  a  physician,  and  he  resided 
there  until  1853.  Here  he  was  frequently  visited  by 
the  Borrows.  We  have  already  quoted  his  prophecy 
concerning  Lavengro  that  '  its  roots  will  strike  deep 
into  the  soil  of  English  letters. '  In  1853  Dr.  Hake  and 
his  family  left  Bury  for  the  United  States,  where  they 
resided  for  some  years.  Returning  to  England  they 
lived  at  Roehampton  and  met  Borrow  occasionally  in 
London.  During  these  years  Hake  was,  according  to  Mr. 
W.  M.  Rossetti, '  the  earthly  Providence  of  the  Rossetti 
family,'  but  he  was  not,  as  his  Memoirs  show,  equally 
devoted  to  Borrow.  In  1872,  however,  he  went  to  live 
in  Germany  and  Italy  for  a  considerable  period.  Con- 
cerning the  relationship  between  Borrow  and  Hake, 
Mr.  Watts-Dunton  has  written  : 

After  Hake  went  to  live  in  Germany,  Borrow  told  me  a  good 
deal  about  their  intimacy,  and  also  about  his  own  early  life  :  for, 
reticent  as  he  naturally  was,  he  and  1  got  to  be  confidential  and 
intimate.  His  friendship  with  Hake  began  when  Hake  was  practis- 
ing as  a  physician  in  Norfolk.  It  lasted  during  the  greater  part 
of  Borrow's  later  life.     When  Borrow  was  living  in  London  his 


390    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

great  delight  was  to  walk  over  on  Sundays  from  Hereford  Square 
to  Coombe  End,  call  upon  Hake,  and  take  a  stroll  with  him  over 
Richmond  Park.  They  both  had  a  passion  for  herons  and  for 
deer.  At  that  time  Hake  was  a  very  intimate  friend  of  my  own, 
and  having  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  introduced  by  him  to 
Borrow  I  used  to  join  the  two  in  their  walks.  Afterwards,  when 
Hake  went  to  live  in  Germany,  I  used  to  take  those  walks  with 
Borrow  alone.  Two  more  interesting  men  it  would  be  impossible 
to  meet.  The  remarkable  thing  was  that  there  was  between  them 
no  sort  of  intellectual  sympathy.  In  style,  in  education,  in  experi- 
ence, whatever  Hake  was,  Borrow  was  not.  Borrow  knew  almost 
nothing  of  Hake's  writings,  either  in  prose  or  in  verse.  His  ideal 
poet  was  Pope,  and  when  he  read,  or  rather  looked  into,  Hake's 
World's  Epitaph,  he  thought  he  did  Hake  the  greatest  honour  by 
saying,  '  there  are  lines  here  and  there  that  are  nigh  as  good  as 
Pope ' ! 

On  the  other  hand.  Hake's  acquaintance  with  Borrow's  works 
was  far  behind  that  of  some  Borrovians  who  did  not  know  Lavengro 
in  the  flesh,  such  as  Saintsbury  and  Mr.  Birrell.  Borrow  was  shy, 
angular,  eccentric,  rustic  in  accent  and  in  locution,  but  with  a 
charm  for  me,  at  least,  that  was  irresistible.  Hake  was  polished, 
easy  and  urbane  in  everything,  and,  although  not  without  pre- 
judice and  bias,  ready  to  shine  generally  in  any  society. 

So  far  as  Hake  was  concerned  the  sole  link  between  them  was 
that  of  reminiscence  of  earlier  days  and  adventures  in  Borrow's 
beloved  East  Anglia.  Among  many  proofs  I  would  adduce  of  this 
I  will  give  one.  I  am  the  possessor  of  the  MS.  of  Borrow's 
Gypsies  of  Spain,  written  partly  in  a  Spanish  notebook  as  he  moved 
about  Spain  in  his  colporteur  days.  It  was  my  wish  that  Hake 
would  leave  behind  him  some  memorial  of  Borrow  more  worthy  of 
himself  and  his  friend  than  those  brief  reminiscences  contained  in 
Memoirs  of  Eighty  Years.  I  took  to  Hake  this  precious  relic  of  one 
of  the  most  wonderful  men  of  the  nineteenth  century,  in  order  to 
discuss  with  him  differences  between  the  MS.  and  the  printed  text. 
Hake  was  writing  in  his  invalid  chair, — writing  verses.  '  What 
does  it  all  matter.?'  he  said.  'I  do  not  think  you  understand 
Lavengro,'  I  said.  Hake  replied,  '  And  yet  Lavengro  had  an 
advantage  over  me,  for  he  understood  nobody.  Every  individuality 
with  which  he  was  brought  into  contact  had,  as  no  one  knows 


FRIENDS  OF  LATER  YEARS  391 

better  than  you,  to  be  tinged  with  colours  of  his  own  before  he  could 
see  it  at  all.'     That,  of  course,  was  true  enough  ;  and   Hake's 
asperities  when  speaking  of  Borrow  in  Memoirs  of  Eighty  Years, — 
asperities  which  have   vexed  a  good  many   Borrovians, — simply 
arose  from  the  fact  that  it  was  impossible  for  two  such  men  to 
understand  each  other.     When  I  told  him  of  Mr.  Lang's  angry 
onslaught  upon  Borrow  in  his  notes  to  the  Waverley  Novels,  on 
account  of  his  attacks  upon  Scott,  he  said,  '  Well,  does  he  not 
deserve  it  ? '     When  I  told  him  of  Miss   Cobbe's  description   of 
Borrow  as  a  poseur,  he  said  to  me,  '  I  told  you  the  same  scores  of 
times.     But  I  saw  Borrow  had  bewitched  you  during  that  first 
walk  under  the  rainbow  in  Richmond  Park.     It  was  that  rain- 
bow, I  think,  that  befooled  you.'     Borrow's  affection  for  Hake, 
however,  was  both  strong  and  deep,  as  I  saw  after  Hake  had  gone 
to   Germany  and  in  a  way  dropped  out  of  Borrow's  ken.     Yet 
Hake  was  as  good  a  man  as  ever  Borrow  was,  and  for  certain 
others  with  whom  he  was  brought  in  contact  as  full  of  a  genuine 
aiFection  as  Borrow  was  himself.^ 


^  Theodore  Watts-Dunton's  memoir  of  Thomas  Gordon  Hake  in  the 
Athenceum,  January  19,  1895. 

An  interesting  letter  that  I  have  received  from  Mr.  Watts-Dunton  clears 
up  several  points  and  may  well  have  place  here  : — 

'The  Pines,  11  Putney  Hill,  S.W.,  31.rf  May  1913. 

'  You  ask  me  what  I  have  written  upon  George  Borrow.  When  Borrow 
died  (26th  July  1881),  the  first  obituary  notice  of  him  in  the  Athenceum  was 
not  by  me,  but  by  W.  Elwin.  This  appeared  on  the  6th  August  1881.  At 
this  time  the  general  public  had  so  forgotten  that  Borrow  was  alive  that  I 
remember  once,  at  one  of  old  Mrs.  Procter's  receptions,  it  had  been  discussed, 
as  Lowell  and  Browning  afterwards  told  me,  as  to  whether  I  was  or  was  not  "  an 
archer  of  the  long  bow  "  because  I  said  that  on  the  previous  Sunday  I  had 
walked  with  Borrow  in  Richmond  Park,  and  was  frequently  seeing  him,  and 
that  on  the  Sunday  before  I  had  walked  in  the  same  beautiful  park  with  Dr. 
Gordon  Latham,  another  celebrity  of  the  past  "  known  to  be  dead. "  The  fact 
is,  Borrow's  really  great  books  were  Lavengro  and  The  Romany  Rye,  and  the 
latter  had  fallen  almost  dead  from  the  press,  smothered  by  Victorian  respecta- 
bility and  Philistinism.  He  was  thoroughly  soured  and  angry,  and  no 
wonder  !  He  fought  shy  of  literary  society.  He  quite  resented  being 
introduced  to  strangers. 

'  Elwin's  article  was  considered  very  unsatisfactory.     Knowing  that  the 
most  competent  man  in  England  to  write  about  Borrow  was  my  old  friend. 


392    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Mr.  Watts-Dunton  refers  here  to  Hake's  asperities 
when  speaking  of  Borrow.  They  are  very  marked  in 
the  Memoirs  of  Eighty  Years,  and  nearly  all  the 
stories  of  Borrow's  eccentricities  that  have  been  served 
up  to  us  by  Borrow's  biographers  are  due  to  Hake. 
It  is  here  we  read  of  his  snub  to  Thackeray.     '  Have 

Dr.  Gordon  Hake,  I  suggested  that  MacCoU  should  ask  the  doctor  (one  of  the 
few  men  whom  Borrow  really  loved)  to  furnish  the  AthencBum  with  another 
article.  This  was  agreed  to^  and  another  article  was  written,  either  by  Dr. 
Hake  himself,  or  by  one  of  his  sons — I  don't  quite  remember  at  this  distance 
of  time.  It  appeared  in  the  Athenceum  of  the  13th  August  1881.  But  even 
this  article  did  not  seem  to  MacColl  to  vitalise  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
personalities  of  the  19th  century  ;  and  as  I  was  then  a  leading  writer  in  the 
literary  department  of  the  Athenceum,  MacColl  asked  me  to  give  him  an 
article  upon  Borrow  whom  I  had  known  so  well.  I  did  so,  and  the  article 
"  caught  on,"  as  MacColl  said,  more  than  had  any  Athenceum  article  for  a  long 
time.  This  appeared  3rd  September  1881.  When  MacColl  read  the  article 
he  was  so  much  pleased  with  it  that  he  urged  me  to  follow  it  up  with  an 
article  on  Borrow  in  connection  with  the  Children  of  the  Open  Air — a  subject 
upon  which  I  had  previously  written  a  good  deal  in  the  Athenceum.  This 
appeared  on  the  10th  September  1881,  and  became  still  more  popular,  and 
the  Athenceum  containing  it  had  quite  an  exceptional  sale. 

^The  Hake  whom  you  inquire  about,  Egmont  Hake,  has  drifted  out  of  my 
ken.  He  at  one  time  lived  in  Paris,  and  wrote  a  book  called  Paris  Originals. 
I  know  that  he  did,  at  one  time,  contemplate  writing  upon  Borrow,  and 
corresponded  with  Mrs.  MacOubrey  with  this  view  ;  but  the  affair  fell 
through.  As  a  son  of  Dr.  Hake's  he  could  not  fail  to  know  Borrow.  He 
wrote  a  brief  article  about  him,  in  the  Dictionary  of  National  Biography.  But 
the  two  Hakes  who  were  thrown  across  Borrow  most  intimately  were  Thomas 
Hake  and  George  Hake,  the  latter  of  whom  lately  died  in  Africa.  Thomas 
Hake,  the  eldest  of  the  family,  knew  Borrow  in  his  own  childhood,  which 
the  other  members  of  the  family  did  not.  After  Dr.  Gordon  Hake  went  to 
live  in  Germany,  after  the  Roehampton  home  was  broken  up,  I  saw  a  good- 
deal  of  Borrow.  He  always  thought  that  no  one  sympathised  with  him  and 
understood  him  so  thoroughly  as  I  did. — Ever  most  cordially  yours, 

'Theodore  Watts-Dunton.' 

Since  receiving  this  letter  I  have  been  in  communication  with  Mr. 
Egmont  Hake,  who  generously  oiFered  to  place  his  Borrow  material  at  my 
disposal,  but  this  offer  came  too  late  to  be  of  service.  Mr.  Hake  will,  however^ 
shortly  publish  his  Memoirs  in  which  he  will  include  some  interesting 
impressions  of  George  Borrow  which  it  has  been  my  privilege  to  read  in 
manuscript. 


FRIENDS  OF  LATER  YEARS  393 

you  read  my  Snob  Papers  in  Punch  ? '  Thackeray 
asked  him.  '  In  Punch  ? '  Borrow  replied.  '  It  is  a 
periodical  I  never  look  at.'  He  was  equally  rude, 
or  shall  we  say  Johnsonian,  according  to  Hake,  when 
Miss  Agnes  Strickland  asked  him  if  she  might  send 
him  her  Qiieens  of  England.  He  exclaimed,  'for 
God's  sake  don't,  madam  ;  I  should  not  know  where 
to  put  them  or  what  to  do  with  them.'  Hake  is 
responsible  also  for  that  other  story  about  the  woman 
who,  desirous  of  pleasing  him,  said,  '  Oh,  Mr.  Borrow, 
I  have  read  your  books  with  so  much  pleasure  ! '  On 
which  he  exclaimed,  '  Pray,  what  books  do  you  mean, 
madam  ?  Do  you  mean  my  account  books  ? '  ^  Dr. 
Johnson  was  guilty  of  many  such  vagaries,  and  the 
readers  of  Boswell  have  forgiven  him  everything  be- 
cause they  are  conveyed  to  them  through  the  medium 
of  a  hero-worshipper.  Borrow  never  had  a  Boswell, 
and  despised  the  literary  class  so  much  that  he  never 
found  anything  in  the  shape  of  an  apologist  until  he 
had  been  long  dead.  The  most  competent  of  these, 
because  writing  from  personal  knowledge,  was  Walter 
Theodore  Watts-Dunton,  who  is  known  in  literature 
as  Theodore  Watts,  the  author  of  Aylwin  and  T'he 
Coming  of  Love,  and  the  writer  of  many  acute  and 
picturesque  criticisms.  Mr.  Watts  -  Dunton  —  who 
added  his  mother's  name  of  Dunton  to  his  own  in 
later  life — was  the  son  of  a  solicitor  of  St.  Ives  in 
Huntingdonshire.      In   early   life    he   was    himself    a 

'  Dr.  Hake  was  equally  severe  in  his  references  to  Thackeray^  of  whom 
scarcely  any  one  has  spoken  ill.  '  Thackeray  spent  a  good  deal  of  his 
time  on  stilts/  he  says.  ' .  .  .  He  was  a  very  disagreeable  companion  to 
those  who  did  not  want  to  boast  that  they  knew  him.' — Memoirs,  p.  86. 
'Thackeray,'  he  says  elsewhere,  'as  if  under  the  impression  that  the  party 
was  invited  to  look  at  him,  thought  it  necessary  to  make  a  figure.  .  .  . 
Borrow  knew  better  how  to  behave  in  good  company.' — Memoirs,  p.  166. 


394    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

solicitor,  which  profession  he  happily  abandoned  for 
literature.  His  friendship  with  Algernon  Charles 
Swinburne  is  one  of  the  romances  of  the  Victorian 
era.  His  affectionate  solicitude  doubtless  kept  that 
great  poet  alive  for  many  a  year  beyond  what  would 
otherwise  have  been  his  lot.  Watts-Dunton  was,  as 
we  have  seen,  introduced  to  Borrow  by  Hake.  He 
has  written  a  romance  which,  if  he  could  be  persuaded 
to  publish  it,  would  doubtless  command  the  same 
attention  as  Aylwin,  in  which  Borrow  is  introduced  as 
*  Dereham '  and  Hake  as  '  Gordon,'  and  here  he  tells 
the  story  of  that  introduction  : 

One  day  when  I  was  sitting  with  him  in  his  delightful  home, 
near  Roehampton,  whose  windows  at  the  back  looked  over 
Richmond  Park,  and  in  front  over  the  wildest  part  of  Wimbledon 
Common,  one  of  his  sons  came  in  and  said  that  he  had  seen 
Dereham  striding  across  the  common,  evidently  bound  for  the 
house. 

'  Dereham,"  I  said,  'is  there  a  man  in  the  world  I  should  so  like 
to  see  as  Dereham  ? ' 

And  then  I  told  Gordon  how  I  had  seen  him  years  before 
swimming  in  the  sea  off  Yarmouth,  but  had  never  spoken  to  him. 

'  Why  do  you  want  so  much  to  see  him  ? '  asked  Gordon. 

'  Well,  among  other  things,  I  want  to  see  if  he  is  a  true  Child 
of  the  Open  Air.'  ^ 

I  find  no  letter  from  Hake  to  Borrow  among  my 
papers,  but  three  to  his  wife : 

Bury  St.  Edmunds,  Jan.  27,  '48.     Evening. 

My  dear  Mrs.  Borrow, — It  gave  me  great  pleasure,  as  it 
always  does,  to  see  your  handwriting;  and  as  respects  the  subject 
of  your  note  you  may  make  yourself  quite  easy,  for  I  believe  the 


*  Theodore    Watts-Dunton:  Poet,   Novelist,  Critic.      By  James  Douglas. 
Hodder  and  Stoughton,  1904,  p.  96. 


FRIENDS  OF  LATER  YEARS  395 

idea  has  crossed  no  other  mind  than  your  own.  How  sorry  I  am 
to  learn  that  you  have  been  so  unwell  since  your  visit  to  us.  I 
hope  that  by  care  you  will  get  strong  during  this  bracing  weather. 
I  wish  that  you  were  already  nearer  to  us,  and  cannot  resign  the 
hope  that  we  shall  yet  enjoy  the  happiness  of  having  you  as  our 
neighbours.  I  have  felt  a  strong  friendship  for  Mr.  Borrow's  mind 
for  many  years,  and  have  ardently  wished  from  time  to  time  to 
know  him,  and  to  have  realised  my  desire  I  consider  one  of  the  most 
happy  events  of  my  life.  Until  lately,  dear  Mrs.  Borrow,  I  have 
had  no  opportunity  of  knowing  you  and  your  sweet  simple-hearted 
child ;  but  now  I  hope  nothing  will  occur  to  interrupt  a  regard 
and  friendship  which  I  and  Mrs.  Hake  feel  most  truly  towards  you 
all.  Tell  Mr.  Borrow  how  much  we  should  like  to  be  his  Sinbad. 
I  wish  he  would  bring  you  all  and  his  papers  and  come  again  to  look 
about  him.  There  is  an  old  hall  at  Tostock,  which,  I  hear  to-day,  is 
quite  dry ;  if  so  it  is  worthy  of  your  attention.  It  is  a  mile  from 
the  Elmswell  station,  which  is  ten  minutes'"  time  from  Bury.  This 
hall  has  got  a  bad  name  from  having  been  long  vacant,  but  some 
friends  of  mine  have  been  over  it  and  they  tell  me  there  is  not  a 
damp  spot  on  the  premises.  It  is  seven  miles  from  Bury.  Mrs. 
Hake  has  written  about  a  house  at  Rougham,  but  had  no  answer. 
The  cottage  at  Farnham  is  to  let  again.  I  know  not  whether 
Mr.  Harvey  will  make  an  effort  for  it.  A  little  change  would  do 
you  all  good,  and  we  can  receive  Miss  Clarke  without  any  difficulty. 
Give  our  kindest  regards  to  your  party,  and  believe  me,  dear  Mrs. 
Borrow,  sincerely  yours,  T.  G.  Hake. 

Bury  St.  Edmunds^  January  Idth,  '49. 

My  dear  Mrs.  Borrow, — The  sight  of  your  handwriting  is 
always  a  luxury — but  you  say  nothing  about  coming  to  see  us. 
We  are  pleased  to  get  good  accounts  of  your  party,  and  only  wish 
you  could  report  better  of  yourself.  I  must  take  you  fairly  in 
hand  when  you  come  again  to  the  ancient  quarters,  for  such  they 
are  becoming  now  from  your  long  absence.  You  might  try 
bismuth  and  extract  of  hop,  which  is  often  very  strengthening  to 
the  stomach.  Five  grains  of  extract  of  hop  and  five  grains  of 
trisnitrate  of  bismuth  made  into  two  pills,  which  are  to  be  taken 
at  eleven  and  repeated  at  four — daily.  I  am  so  pleased  to  learn 
that  Miss  Clarke  is  better,  as  well  as  Mr.  Borrow.     I  hope  that  on 


396    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

some  occasion  the  morphia  may  be  of  great  comfort  to  him  should 
his  night  watchings  return.  It  is  good  news  that  the  proofs  are 
advancing — I  hope  towards  a  speedy  end.  Messrs.  Oakes  and  Co-'s 
Bank  is  as  safe  as  any  in  the  kingdom  and  more  substantial  than 
any  in  this  county.  It  must  be  safe,  for  the  partners  are  men  of 
large  property,  and  of  careful  habits.  I  am  happy  to  say  we 
are  all  well  here,  but  my  brother's  house  in  town  is  a  scene  of  sad 
trouble.  He  is  himself  laid  up  with  bad  scarlet  fever  as  well  as 
five  children,  all  severely  attacked.  One  they  have  lost  of  this 
fearful  complaint. 

Give  our  kindest  regards  to  Mr.  Borrow  and  accept  them 
yourselves.     Ever,  dear  Mrs.  Borrow,  sincerely  yours, 

T.  G.  Hake. 

I  send  Beethoven''s  epitaph  for  Miss  Clarke's  album  according 
to  promise.     It  is  not  by  Wordsworth. 

Bury  St.  Edmunds,  June  24,  '61. 

My  dear  Mrs.  Borrow, — I  am  very  sorry  to  hear  that  you  are 
not  feeling  strong,  and  that  these  flushes  of  heat  are  so  frequent 
and  troublesome.  I  will  prescribe  a  medicine  for  you  which  I 
hope  may  prove  serviceable.  Let  me  hear  again  about  your  health, 
and  be  assured  you  cannot  possibly  give  me  any  trouble. 

I  am  also  glad  to  hear  of  Mr.  Borrow.  I  envy  him  his  bath. 
I  am  looking  out  anxiously  for  the  new  quarterly  reviews.  I 
wonder  whether  the  Quarterly/  will  contain  anything.  Is  there  a 
prospect  of  vol.  iv.  ?  I  really  look  to  passing  a  day  and  two  half 
days  with  you,  and  to  bringing  Mrs.  Hake  to  your  classic  soil 
some  time  in  August — if  we  are  not  inconveniencing  you  in  your 
charming  and  snug  cottage.  I  hope  Miss  Clarke  is  well.  Our 
united  kind  regards  to  you  all.  George  is  quite  brisk  and  saucy 
— Lucy  and  the  infant  have  not  been  well.  Mrs.  Hake  has  better 
accounts  from  Bath.  Believe  me,  dear  Mrs.  Borrow,  very  sincerely 
yours,  T.  G.  Hake. 

Mr.  Donne  was  pleased  that  Mr.  Borrow  liked  his  notice  in 
Tait.  You  can  take  a  little  cold  sherry  and  water  after  your 
dinner. 

Mr.  A.  Egmont  Hake,  one   of  Dr.   Hake's  sons. 


FRIENDS  OF  LATER  YEARS  397 

has    also    given    us    an    interesting    reminiscence    of 
Borrow :  ^ 

Though  he  was  a  friend  of  my  family  before  he  wrote  Lavengro^ 
few  men  have  ever  made  so  deep  an  impression  on   me  as  George 
Borrow,     His  tall,  broad  figure,  his  stately  bearing,  his  fine  brown 
eyes,  so  bright  yet  soft,  his  thick  white  hair,  his  oval,  beardless  face, 
his  loud  rich  voice,  and  bold  heroic  air,  were  such  as  to  impress  the 
most  indifferent  of  lookers-on.     Added  to  this  there  was  something 
not  easily  forgotten    in  the  manner    in    which   he  would    unex- 
pectedly come  to  our  gates,  singing  some  gipsy  song,  and  as  suddenly 
depart.     His  conversation,  too,  was  unlike  that  of  any  other  man  ; 
whether  lie  told  a  long  story  or  only  commented  on  some  ordinary 
topic,    he    was   always    quaint,    often    humorous  ...  It    was   at 
Oulton  that  the  author  of  The  Bible  in  Spain  spent  his  happiest 
days.     The  menage  in  his  Suffolk  home  was  conducted  with  great 
simplicity,  but  he  always  had  for  his  friends  a  bottle  or  two  of 
wine  of  rare  vintage,  and  no  man  was  more  hearty  than  he  over 
the  glass.     He  passed  his  mornings  in  his  summer-house,  writing 
on  small   scraps  of  paper,  and  these  he  handed  to  his  wife  who 
copied  them  on  foolscap.     It  was  in  this  way  and  in  this  retreat 
that  the  manuscript  of  Lavengro  as  well  as  of  The  Bible  in  Spain 
was    prepared,   the   place  of  which  he   says,  '  I  hastened  to  my 
summer-house  by  the  side  of  the  lake  and  there  I  thought  and 
wrote,  and  every  day  I  repaired  to  the   same  place  and  thought 
and  wrote  until  I  had  finished  The  Bible  in  Spain.''    In  this  outdoor 
studio,  hung  behind  the  door,  were  a  soldier's  coat  and  a  sword 


which  belonged   to    his    father ;    these   were  household    gods   on 
which  he  would  often  gaze  while  composing. 

To  Mr.  Watts -Dunton  we  owe  by  far  the  best 
description  of  Sorrow's  personal  appearance  : 

What  Borrow  lacked  in  adaptability  was  in  great  degree  com- 
pensated by  his  personal  appearance.  No  one  who  has  ever 
walked  with  him,  either  through  the  streets  of  London  or  along 


^  '  Recollections  of  George  Borrow/  by  A.  Egmont  Hak  e  in  The  AthenoBum, 
Aug.  13,  1881. 


398    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

the  country  roads,  could  fail  to  remark  how  his  appearance 
arrested  the  attention  of  the  passers-by.  As  a  gypsy  woman  once 
remarked  to  the  present  writer,  '  Everybody  as  ever  see'd  the 
white-headed  Romany  Rye  never  forgot  him.'  When  he  chanced 
to  meet  troops  marching  along  a  country  road,  it  was  noticeable 
that  every  soldier,  whether  on  foot  or  horseback,  would  involun- 
tarily turn  to  look  at  Borrow's  striking  figure.  He  stood  con- 
siderably above  six  feet  in  height,  was  built  as  perfectly  as  a 
Greek  statue,  and  his  practice  of  athletic  exercises  gave  his  every 
movement  the  easy  elasticity  of  an  athlete  under  training.  Those 
East  Anglians  who  have  bathed  with  him  on  the  east  coast,  or 
others  who  have  done  the  same  in  the  Thames  or  the  Ouse,  can 
vouch  for  his  having  been  an  almost  faultless  model  of  masculine 
symmetry,  even  as  an  old  man.  With  regard  to  his  countenance, 
'  noble '  is  the  only  word  which  can  be  used  to  describe  it.  When 
he  was  quite  a  young  man  his  thick  crop  of  hair  had  become  of  a 
silvery  whiteness.^  There  was  a  striking  relation  between  the 
complexion,  which  was  as  luminous  and  sometimes  rosy  as  an 
English  girl's,  and  the  features — almost  perfect  Roman-Greek  in 
type,  with  a  dash  of  Hebrew.  To  the  dark  lustre  of  the  eyes  an 
increased  intensity  was  lent  by  the  fair  skin.  No  doubt,  however, 
what  most  struck  the  observer  was  the  marked  individuality,  not 
to  say  singularity,  of  his  expression.  If  it  were  possible  to 
describe  this  expression  in  a  word  or  two,  it  might,  perhaps,  be 
called  a  self-consciousness  that  was  both  proud  and  shy.^ 

Here  is  another  picture  by  Mr.  Watts-Dunton  of 
this  London  period  :  ^ 

At  seventy  years  of  age,  after  breakfasting  at  eight  o'clock  in 
Hereford  Square,  he  would  walk  to  Putney,  meet  one  or  more  of 
us  at  Roehamptom,  roam  about  Wimbledon  and  Richmond  Park 
with  us,  bathe  in  the  Fen  Ponds  with  a  north-east  wind  cutting 
across  the  icy  water  like  a  razor,  run  about  the  grass  afterwards. 


*  Borrow's  hair  was  black  until  he  was  about  twenty  years  of  age,  when  it 
turned  white. 

2  Chambers's  Cyclopaedia  of  English  Literature,  vol.  ill.  p   430. 
^  The  Athenaum,  September  3,  1881. 


FRIENDS  OF  LATER  YEARS  399 

like  a  boy  to  shake  off'  some  of  the  water-drops,  stride  about  the 
park  for  hours,  and  then,  after  fasting  for  twelve  hours,  eat  a 
dinner  at  Roehampton  that  would  have  done  Sir  Walter  Scotfs 
eyes  good  to  see.  Finally,  he  would  walk  back  to  Hereford 
Square,  getting  home  late  at  night.  And  if  the  physique  of  the 
man  was  bracing,  his  conversation,  unless  he  happened  to  be 
suffering  from  one  of  his  occasional  fits  of  depression,  was  still 
more  so.  Its  freshness,  raciness,  and  eccentric  whim  no  pen  could 
describe.  There  is  a  kind  of  humour,  the  delight  of  which  is 
that  while  you  smile  at  the  pictures  it  draws,  you  smile  quite  as 
much  to  think  that  there  is  a  mind  so  whimsical,  crotchety,  and 
odd  as  to  draw  them.     This  was  the  humour  of  Borrow. 

And  there  is  yet  another  description,  equally  illumin- 
ating, in  which  Mr.  Watts-Dunton  records  how  he  won 
Borrow's  heart  by  showing  a  familiarity  with  Douglas 
Jerrold's  melodrama  Ambrose  Gwinett : 

From  that  time  I  used  to  see  Borrow  often  at  Roehampton, 
sometimes  at  Putney,  and  sometimes,  but  not  often,  in  London. 
I  could  have  seen  much  more  of  him  than  I  did  had  not  the 
whirlpool  of  London,  into  which  I  plunged  for  a  time,  borne  me 
away  from  this  most  original  of  men  ;  and  this  is  what  I  so  greatly 
lament  now :  for  of  Borrow  it  may  be  said,  as  it  was  said  of  a 
greater  man  still,  that  'after  Nature  made  him  she  forthwith 
broke  the  mould.'  The  last  time  I  ever  saw  him  was  shortly 
before  he  left  London  to  live  in  the  country.  It  was,  I  remember 
well,  on  Waterloo  Bridge,  where  I  had  stopped  to  gaze  at  a  sun- 
set of  singular  and  striking  splendour,  whose  gorgeous  clouds  and 
ruddy  mists  were  reeling  and  boiling  over  the  West-End. 
Borrow  came  up  and  stood  leaning  over  the  parapet,  entranced  by 
the  sight,  as  well  he  might  be.  Like  most  people  born  in  flat 
districts,  he  had  a  passion  for  sunsets.  Turner  could  not  have 
painted  that  one,  I  think,  and  certainly  my  pen  could  not  describe 
it ;  for  the  London  smoke  was  flushed  by  the  sinking  sun,  and  had 
lost  its  dunness,  and,  reddening  every  moment  as  it  rose  above  the 
roofs,  steeples,  and  towers,  it  went  curling  round  the  sinking  sun 
in  a  rosy  vapour,  leaving,  however,  just  a  segment  of  a  golden 
rim,  which  gleamed  as  dazzlingly  as  in  the  thinnest  and  clearest 


400    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

air — a  peculiar  effect  which  struck  Borrow  deeply.  I  never  saw 
such  a  sunset  before  or  since,  not  even  on  Waterloo  Bridge  ;  and 
from  its  association  with  '  the  last  of  Borrow ""  I  shall  never 
forget  it.^ 

Mr.  Watts-Dunton  concludes  his  reminiscences — 
the  most  valuable  personal  record  that  we  have  of 
Borrow — with  a  sonnet  that  now  has  its  place  in 
literature : 

We  talked  of  '  Children  of  the  Open  Air' 
Who  once  in  Orient  valleys  lived  aloof, 
Loving  the  sun,  the  vi^ind,  the  sweet  reproof 

Of  storms,  and  all  that  makes  the  fair  earth  fair, 

Till,  on  a  day,  across  the  mystic  bar 

Of  moom-ise,  came  the  '  Children  of  the  Roof,' 
Who  find  no  balm  'neath  Evening's  rosiest  woof^ 

Nor  dews  of  peace  beneath  the  Morning  Star. 

We  looked  o'er  London  where  men  wither  and  choke, 
Roofed  in,  poor  souls,  renouncing  stars  and  skies. 
And  lore  of  woods  and  wild  wind-prophecies — 

Yea,  every  voice  that  to  their  fathers  spoke  : 

And  sweet  it  seemed  to  die  ere  bricks  and  smoke 
Leave  never  a  meadow  outside  Paradise. 


^  The  Athcnceum,  September  10,  1881.  I  am  indebted  to  my  friend  Mr. 
John  Collins  Francis,  of  The  AthencBum  newspaper,  for  generously  placing 
the  columns  of  that  journal  at  my  disposal  for  the  purposes  of  this  book. 


CHAPTER    XXXV 

BORROWS  UNPUBLISHED  WRITINGS 

To  many  in  our  day,  less  utilitarian  than  those  of 
an  earlier  era,  Borrow  must  have  been  an  interesting 
man  of  letters  had  he  not  written  his  four  great  books. 
Single-minded  devotion  to  the  less  commercially  re- 
munerative languages  has  now  become  respectable 
and  even  estimable.  Students  of  the  Scandinavian 
languages,  and  of  the  Celtic,  abound  in  our  midst. 
Borrow  was  a  forerunner  with  Bowring  of  much  of 
this  '  useless  '  learning.  Borrow  came  to  consider  Bow- 
ring's  apparent  neglect  of  him  to  be  unforgivable. 
But  that  time  had  not  arrived,  when  in  1842  he  wrote 
to  him  as  follows  : 


To  Dr.  John  Bowring 

OuLTON,  Lowestoft,  Suffolk,  July  lAth,  1842. 
Dear  dear  Sir, —  Pray  excuse  my  troubling  you  with  a  line.    I 
wish  you   would  send  as  many  of  the  papers  and   manuscripts, 
which    I  left  at  yours  some  twelve  years  ago,   as  you   can  find. 
Amongst  others  there  is  an  essay  on  Welsh  poetry,  a  translation  of 
the  Death  of  Balder^  etc.     If  I  am  spared  to  the  beginning   of 
next   year,    I    intend    to  bring   out    a    volume    called    Songs   of 
Denmark^  consisting  of  some  selections  from  the  Koempe  Viser  and 
specimens  from  Ewald,  Grundtvig,  Oehlensch lager,  and  I  suppose 
I  must  give  a  few  notices  of  those  people.    Have  you  any  history  of 

2  c  401 


402    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Danish  literature  from  which  I  could  glean  a  few  hints.  I  think 
you  have  a  book  in  two  volumes  containing  specimens  of  Danish 
poetry.  It  would  be  useful  to  me  as  I  want  to  translate  Ingemann's 
Dannebroff,  and  one  or  two  other  pieces.  I  shall  preface  all  with 
an  essay  on  the  Danish  language.  It  is  possible  that  a  book  of 
this  description  may  take,  as  Denmark  is  quite  an  untrodden 
field. 

Could  you  lend  me  for  a  short  time  a  Polish  and  French  or 
Polish  and  German  dictionary.  I  am  going  carefully  through 
Makiewitz,  about  whom  I  intend  to  write  an  article. 

The  Bible  in  Spain  is  in  the  press,  and  with  God's  permission 
will  appear  about  November  in  three  volumes.  I  shall  tell 
Murray  to  send  a  copy  to  my  oldest,  I  may  say  my  only  friend. 
Pray  let  me  know  how  you  are  getting  on.  I  every  now  and  then 
see  your  name  in  the  Examiner^  the  only  paper  I  read.  Should 
you  send  the  papers  and  the  books  it  must  be  by  the  Yarmouth 
coach  which  starts  from  Fetter  Lane.  Address  :  George  Borrow, 
Crown  Inn,  Lowestoft,  Suffolk.  With  kindest  remembrances  to 
Mrs.  Bowring,  Miss  Bowring,  and  family — I  remain.  Dear  Sir, 
ever  yours,  George  Borrow. 

Now  with  the  achieved  success  of  The  Bible  in 
Spain  and  the  leisure  of  a  happy  home  Borrow  could 
for  the  moment  think  of  the  ambition  of  '  twelve  years 
ago ' — an  ambition  to  put  before  the  public  some  of 
the  results  of  his  marvellous  industry.  The  labours  of 
the  dark,  black  years  between  1825  and  1830  might  now 
perchance  see  the  light.  Three  such  books  got  them- 
selves published,  as  we  have  seen.  Romantic  Ballads, 
Targum,  and  llie  Talisman.  The  Sleeping  Bard  had 
been  translated  and  offered  to  'a  little  Welsh  book- 
seller' of  Smithfield  in  1830,  who,  however,  said,  when 
he  had  read  it,  '  were  I  to  print  it  I  should  be  ruined.' 
That  fate  followed  the  book  to  the  end,  and  Borrow  was 
premature  when  he  said  in  his  Preface  to  The  Sleeping 
Bard  that  such  folly  is  on  the  decHne,  because  he 
found  '  Albemarle  Street  in  '60  wiUing  to  publish  a 


BORROWS  UNPUBLISHED  WRITINGS     403 


i9,AwA 


mi  W)h  m  '^%^  5]  ¥/^  WtwlO 


FACSIMILE  OF  A  POEM  FROM  TARGUM 
A  Translation  from  the  French  by  George   Borrow 


404    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

harmless  but  plain-speaking  book  which  Smithfield 
shrank  from  in  '30.'  At  the  last  moment  John 
Murray  refused  to  publish,  but  seems  to  have  agreed 
to  give  his  imprint  to  the  title-page.  Borrow  pub- 
lished the  book  at  his  own  expense,  it  being  set  up  by- 
James  Matthew  Denew,  of  72  Hall  Plain,  Great 
Yarmouth.  Fourteen  years  later — in  1874 — Mr.  Murray 
made  some  amends  by  publishing  Romano  Lavo-Lil, 
in  which  are  many  fine  translations  from  the  Romany, 
and  that,  during  his  lifetime,  was  the  '  beginning  and 
the  end '  of  Borrow's  essays  in  publishing  so  far  as  his 
translations  were  concerned.  Webber,  the  bookseller 
of  Ipswich,  did  indeed  issue  IVie  Turkish  Jester — 
advertised  as  ready  for  publication  in  1857  —  in 
1884,  and  Jarrold  of  Norwich  The  Death  of  Balder  in 
1889  ;  but  enthusiasts  have  asked  in  vain  for  Celtic 
Bards,  Chiefs  and  Kings,  Songs  of  Europe,  and 
Northern  Skalds,  Kings  and  Earls.  It  is  not 
recorded  whether  Borrow  offered  these  to  any 
publisher  other  than  '  Glorious  John  '  of  Albemarle 
Street,  but  certain  it  is  that  Mr.  Murray  would  have 
none  of  them.  The  '  mountains  of  manuscript ' 
remained  to  be  the  sorrowful  interest  of  Borrow  as  an 
old  man  as  they  had — many  of  them— been  the 
sorrow  and  despair  of  his  early  manhood.  Here  is  a 
memorandum  in  his  daughter's  handwriting  of  the 
work  that  Borrow  was  engaged  upon  at  the  time  of 
his  death  : 

Songs  of  Ireland.  Songs  of  Iceland. 

Songs  of  the  Isle  of  Man.  Songs  of  Sweden. 

Songs  of  Wales.  Songs  of  Germany. 

Songs  of  the  Gaelic  Highlands.  Songs  of  Holland. 

Songs  of  Anglo-Saxon  England.  Songs  of  Ancient  Greece. 

Songs  of  the  North,  Mythological.  Songs  of  the  Modern  Greeks. 

Songs  of  the  North,  Heroic.  Songs  of  the  Klephts. 


BORROWS  UNPUBLISHED  WRITINGS     405 

Songs  of  Denmark,  Early  Period.  Songs  of  Ancient  Rome. 

Songs  of  Denmark^  Modern  Period.  Songs  of  the  Church. 

Songs  of  the  Feroe  Isles.  Songs  of  the  Troubadours. 

Songs  of  the  Gascons.  Songs  of  Normandy. 

Songs  of  Modern  Italy.  Songs  of  Spain. 

Songs  of  Portugal.  Songs  of  Russia. 

Songs  of  Poland.  Songs  of  the  Basques. 

Songs  of  Hungary.  Songs  of  Finland. 
Songs  and  Legends  of  Turkey. 

These  translations  were  intended  to  form  a  volume  with 
copious  notes,  but  were  only  completed  a  month  before  Mr. 
Borrow''s  death,  which  occurred  at  his  residence,  Oulton  Cottage, 
Suffolk,  July  26th,  1881,  in  the  seventy-ninth  year  of  his  age. 
This  grand  old  man,  full  of  years  and  honour,  was  buried  beside 
his  wife  (who  had  proved  a  noble  helpmate  to  him),  in  Brompton 
Cemetery,  August  4th. 

And  so  what  many  will  consider  Borrow's  *  craze ' 
for  verse  translations  remained  with  him  to  the  end. 
We  know  with  what  equanimity  he  bore  his  defeat 
in  early  years.     Did    he  not  make  humorous   '  copy ' 
out  of  it  in  Lavengro.     It  must  have  been  a  greater 
disappointment  that  his  publisher  would  have  none  of 
his  wares  when  he  had  proved  by  writing  The  Bible 
in  Spain  that  at  least  some  of  his  work  had  money  in  it. 
For  years  it  was  Borrow's  opinion  that  Lockhart  stood 
in  his  way,  wishing  to  hold  the  field  with  his  Ancie7it 
Spanish  Ballads  (1821),  and  maintaining  that  Borrow 
was  no  poet.     The  view  that  Borrow  had  no  poetry  in 
him  and  that  his  verse  is  always  poor  has  been  held 
by  many  of   Borrow's  admirers.     The  view  will   not 
have  the  support  of  those  who  have  had  the  advantage 
of  reading  all  Borrow's  less  known  published  writings, 
and  the  many  manuscripts   that  he  left  behind  liim. 
But  on  the  general  question  let  us  hear  Mr.  Theodore 
Watts-Dunton : — 


406    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

It  should  never  be  forgotten  that  Borrow  was,  before  every- 
thing else,  a  poet.  ...  By  poet  I  do  not  mean  merely  a  man  who 
is  skilled  in  writing  lyrics  and  sonnets  and  that  kind  of  thing, 
but  primarily  a  man  who  has  the  poetic  gift  of  seeing  through 
'the  show  of  things,'  and  knowing  where  he  is — the  gift  of 
drinking  deeply  of  the  waters  of  life,  and  of  feeling  grateful  to 
Nature  for  so  sweet  a  draught.'  ^ 

Possibly  JMr.  Watts-Dunton  did  not  contemplate 
his  idea  being  applied  to  Borrow's  verse  translations, 
but  all  the  same  the  quality  of  poetic  imagination 
may  be  found  here  in  abundance.  The  little  Welsh 
bookseller  of  Smithfield  said  to  Borrow  in  reference 
to  The  Sleeping  Bard  : 

Were  I  to  print  it  I  should  be  ruined ;  the  terrible  description 
of  vice  and  torment  would  frighten  the  genteel  part  of  the 
English  public  out  of  its  wits,  and  I  should  to  a  certainty  be 
prosecuted  by  Sir  James  Scarlett.  I  am  much  obliged  to  you 
for  the  trouble  you  have  given  yourself  on  my  account — but, 
Myn  Diawl!  I  had  no  idea,  till  I  had  read  him  in  English, 
that  Elis  Wyn  had  been  such  a  terrible  fellow. 

And  here  the  little  Welsh  bookseller  paid  Borrow 
a  signal  compliment.  In  the  main  Borrow  provided  a 
prose  translation  of  The  Sleeping  Bard.  In  Targuvi, 
however,  he  showed  himself  a  quite  gifted  balladist, 
far  removed  from  the  literary  standard  of  Romantic 
Ballads  ten  years  earlier.  Space  does  not  permit  of 
any  quotation  in  this  chapter,  and  I  must  be  content 
here  to  declare  that  the  spirit  of  poetry  came  over 
Borrow  on  many  occasions.  The  whole  of  Borrow's 
Songs  of  Scandinavia  will  ultimately  be  published, 
although  for  eighty  and  more  years'"  the  pile  of  neatly 

^  The  AthenoBum,  September  3,  1881. 

2  In  the  Monthly  Magazine  for  March  1830  under  the  head  of  '  Miscellan- 
eous Intelligence '  we  find  the  following  announcement . — 

*  Dr.  Bowring  and  Mr.  George  Borrow  are  about  to  publish  The  Songs  of 


BORROWS  UNPUBLISHED  WRITINGS     407 

written  manuscript  of  that  book,  which  is  now  in  my 
possession,  has  appealed  for  pubhcation  in  vain.  There 
will  be  found,  in  such  a  ballad  as  07ni  IJngerswmjne, 
for  example,  a  practical  demonstration  that  Borrow 
had  the  root  of  the  matter  in  him.  It  is  true  that 
Borrows  limited  acquaintance  with  English  poetry 
was  a  serious  drawback  to  great  achievement,  and 
his  many  translations  from  his  favourite  Welsh  bard 
Goronwy  Owen  that  are  before  me  are  too  much 
under  the  influence  of  Pope.  In  addition  to  the 
Songs  of  Sccmdinavia  I  have  before  me  certain  other 
ballads  in  manuscript — such  portions  of  his  various 
unpublished  but  frequently  advertised  works  as  did 
not  fall  to  Dr.  Knapp.^  Of  these  I  do  not  hesitate  to 
say  that  whatever  the  difference  of  opinion  as  to  their 
poetic  quality  there  can  be  no  difference  of  opinion  as  to 
their  being  well-told  stories  of  an  exceedingly  interest- 
ing and  invigorating  character.  But  I  must  leave  for 
another  time  and  another  opportunity  any  discussion 
of  Borrow's  poetic  achievement  of  which  at  present  the 
world  has  had  little  opportunity  of  knowing  anything.^ 
Of  prose  manuscript  there  is  also  a  considerable  quantity, 
including  diaries  of  travel  and  translations  of  nine  or 
ten  stories  from  various  languages.  Of  the  minor  books 
already  published  we  have  already  spoken  of  Faustus, 
Ro7nantic  Ballads,  Tai'guvi,  and  The  Talisman,  and 
Borrow's  last  and  least  interesting  book  Romano  Lavo- 
Lil.      There  remains  but  to  recall : — 


Scandinavia,  containing  a  selection  of  the  most  interesting  of  the  Historical 
and  Romantic  Ballads  of  North- Western  Europe,  with  specimens  of  the 
Danish  and  Norwegian  Poets  down  to  the  present  day.' 

^  Dr.  Knapp's  Borrow  manuscripts  are  now  in  the  Hispanic  Society's 
Archives  in  New  York. 

^  I  contemplate  at  a  later  date  an  edition  of  Borrow's  Collected  Writings^ 
in  which  the  unpublished  verse  will  extend  to  two  volumes. 


408    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

The  Sleeping  Bard,        published  by     John  Murray,  1860 
The  Turkish  Jester,  „  W.  Webber,  1884 

The  Death  of  Balder,  „         Jarrold  and  Sons,  1889 

These  eight  little  volumes  will  always  remain  Bor- 
row's  least-read  books.  Only  in  Targum  and  The 
Sleeping  Bard  do  we  find  much  indication  of  those 
qualities  which  made  him  famous.  It  is  not  in  the 
least  surprising  that  the  other  work  failed  to  find  a 
publisher,  and,  indeed,  from  a  merely  commercial  point 
of  view,  the  late  John  Murray  had  more  excuse  for 
refusing  Romano  Lavo-Lil,  which  he  did  publish,  than 
The  Sleeping  Bard,  which  he  refused  to  publish — 
at  least  on  his  own  responsibility.  Such  books,  what- 
ever their  merits,  are  issued  to-day  only  by  learned 
societies.  In  a  quite  different  category  were  those 
many  ballads^  from  diverse  languages  that  Borrow  had 
hoped  to  issue  under  such  titles  as  Celtic  Bards,  Chiefs 
and  Kings,  and  Northern  Skalds,  Kings  and  Earls. 
These  books  would  have  had  no  difficulty  in  finding  a 
publisher  to-day  were  they  offered  by  a  writer  of  one 
half  the  popularity  of  Borrow.^ 

There  is,  I  repeat,  excellent  work  in  these  ballads. 
As  to  Targum  let  it  not  be  forgotten  that  Hasfeld — 
really  a  good  judge— said  in  l^he  Athenceum.  that  'the 
work  is  a  pearl  of  genius,'  and  that  William  Bodham 
Donne  declared  that '  the  language  and  rhythm  are  vastly 
superior  to  Macaulay's  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome.'  As  to 
The  Sleeping  Bard  Borrow  himself  was  able  to  make 
his  own  vigorous  defence  of  that  work.     In  emulation 

1  Certain  of  these  have  of  late  been  privately  printed  in  pamphlet  form — 
limited  to  thirty  copies  each. 

2  The  works  of  Dr.  George  Sigerson,  Dr.  Douglas  Hyde  and  Dr.  Kuno 
Meyer  in  Irish  Literature  are  an  evidence  of  this.  Dr.  Sigerson's  Bards  of 
the  Gael  and  Gaul  and  Dr.  Hyde's  Love  Songs  of  Connaught  have  each  gone 
through  more  than  one  edition  and  have  proved  remunerative  to  their  authors. 


BORROWS  UNPUBLISHED  WRITINGS     409 

of  Walter  Scott  he  reviewed  himself  in  TJie  Quarterly,^ 


«...  LI  Ipj^i  fvinyi,:, 


lDil!cu)JaA.H4(l(Wic»u. 


mm  .   w  will  aa  iim^mwwA^in.    ^,;  ^-ob/.r^/.T®  ^Uo(.®  11/.  l\-Yi  a-n  1)/.  ifii 
iWui^omJi  fiU,  w\i,taiijrwvi ,   ...         /   '  '    ,1  .,,  „,,,J'fJ  ,„     /, ,  f-, 


9rtid  i*i  Miu  iffuf  &'ia.Tli!iidm?  ki*.     >)<1)«0V/  lni,u  bA  an'/.  0 


fVOJQ  0JO'>  '/^'^  ^0'rr,6    fcv^o  A"j|  ^Vi,  (>^f, 


BORROAV  AS  A  PROFESSOR  OF  LANGUAGES 
An   'Advertisement'  put  forth  by  Borrow  in  Norwich  during  the  years  of 
struggle  before  he  was  sent  to  Russia  by  the  Bible  Society.     This  interesting 
document,  which  is  in  Sorrow's  handwriting,  is  in  the  possession  of  Mr.  Frank 
J.  Farrell  of  Great  Yarmouth,  by  whose  courtesy  it  is  reproduced  here. 

His  article  is  really  an  essay  on  Welsh  poetry,  and  in- 
cidentally he  quotes  from  his  unpublished  Celtic  Sards, 
Chiefs  and  Kings  a  lengthy  passage,  the  manuscript  of 

^  The  Quarterly  Review,  January  1861,  pp.  38-63. 


410    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

which  is  in  my  possession.  We  are  introduced  again 
to  all  Borrow's  old  friends  of  fVild  Wales :  Hew 
Morris,  Goronwy  Owen,  and  finally  Elis  Wyn. 
Borrow  quotes  from  The  Roincmy  Rye,  but  as  becomes 
a  reviewer  of  his  own  book,  gives  no  praise  to  his 
achievement. 

I  find  no  plays  among  Borrow's  '  mountains  of 
manuscript'  in  my  possession,  and  so  I  am  not  dis- 
posed to  accept  the  suggestion  that  the  following 
letter  from  GifFord  to  Borrow  refers  to  a  play  which 
Borrow  pretended  to  be  the  work  of  a  friend  while  it 
was  really  his  own.  If  it  was  his  own  he  doubtless 
took  Gilford's  counsel  to  heart  and  promptly  destroyed 
the  manuscript  :— 

To  George  Borrow,  Esq. 

A  Speciiiien  of  Giffbrd's  criti- 
cism on  a  friend's  play,  which  I 
was  desired  to  send  to  him. 

My  dear  Borrow, — I  have  read  your  M.S.  very  attentively, 
and  may  say  of  it  with  Desdemona  of  the  song — ■ 

'  It  is  silly,  sooth. 
And  dallies  with  the  innocence  of  love 
Like  to  old  age.' 

The  poetry  in  some  places  is  pretty,  the  sentiment  is  also  excel- 
lent. And  can  I  say  more?  The  plot  is  petty,  the  characters 
without  vigour,  and  the  story  poorly  told.  Instead  of  Irene  the 
scene  seems  to  be  laid  in  Arcadia,  and  the  manners  are  not  so 
much  confounded  as  totally  lost.  There  are  Druids — but  such 
Druids  !     O  Lord  ! 

There  is  to  be  seen  no  physical,  perhaps  no  moral  lesson, 
though  a  Druid  should  not  be  a  rogue — but  it  is  not  so  set  down 
in  the  bond.  Is  this  the  characterisation  which  we  have  been 
used  to  see  there  ?     To  end  an  unpleasant  letter,  I  must  leave  to 


BORROWS  UNPUBLISHED  WRITINGS    411 

your  friendship  for  the  author  to  contrive  some  mode  of  dis- 
suading him  from  publishing.  If,  however,  he  is  determined  to 
rush  on  the  world,  let  him  do  it,  in  the  first  place,  anonymously. 


I  TO  'mftiTlMlM. 


'  lift  I'J  YH  ^'^^^  ^'*^*^  ^***' 


A  PAGE  OF  THE  MANUSCRIPT  OF  BORROWS  SONGS  OF 
SCANDINAVIA— AN  UNPUBLISHED  WORK 

If  it  takes,  he  may  then  toss  up  his  nose  at  my  opinion,  and  claim 
his  work. 

Say  nothing  of  me,  for  I  would  not  be  thought  to  offend  so 
excellent  and  so  able  a  man.  He  may  be  content  with  his  literary 
fame,  and  can  do  without  poetic  praise. 


412    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

Your  answer  is  short.  The  play  might  have  passed  very  well 
had  it  been  published  when  written,  and  when  the  writer  was  yet 
young  and  little  known,  but  it  will  be  hazardous  now,  as  the 
world  is  cross-grained,  and  will  not  see  your  master  in  the  grave 
and  learned  author  of  so  many  valuable  works;  but  judge  him 
from  his  present  attainments.  But  this,  as  Mrs.  Quickly  says,  '  is 
alligant  terms,'  and  it  may  do, — Ever  yours,  Wm.  Giffohd. 

P.S. — I  see  the  preface  is  already  written,  and  do  what  you 
will,  the  play  will  be  published. 

One  other  phase  of  this  more  limited  aspect  of  Bor- 
row's  work  may  be  dealt  with  here — his  mastery  of 
languages.  I  have  before  me  scores  of  pages  which 
reveal  the  way  that  Borrow  became  a  lav-engro 
— a  word-master.  He  drew  up  tables  of  every  lan- 
guage in  turn,  the  English  word  following  the  German, 
or  Welsh,  or  whatever  the  tongue  might  be,  and  he 
learnt  these  off  with  amazing  celerity.  His  wonderful 
memory  was  his  greatest  asset  in  this  particular.  He 
was  not  a  philologist  if  we  accept  the  dictionary  defini- 
tion of  that  word  as  '  a  person  versed  in  the  science  of 
language.'  But  his  interest  in  languages  is  refreshing 
and  interesting — never  pedantic,  and  he  takes  rank 
among  those  disinterested  lovers  of  learning  who 
pursue  their  researches  without  any  regard  to  the 
honours  or  emoluments  that  they  may  bring,  loving 
learning  for  learning's  sake,  undaunted  by  the  dis- 
couragements that  come  from  the  indifference  of  a 
world  to  which  they  have  made  their  appeal  in  vain. 


CHAPTER    XXXVI 

HENRIETTA  CLARKE 

Borrow  never  had  a  child,  but  happy  for  him  was  the 
part  played  by  his  stepdaughter  Henrietta  in  his  life. 
She  was  twenty-three  years  old  when  her  mother 
married  him,  and  it  is  clear  to  me  that  she  was  from 
the  beginning  of  their  friendship  and  even  to  the 
end  of  his  life  devoted  to  her  stepfather.  Readers 
of  JFild  Wales  will  recall  not  only  the  tribute  that 
Borrow  pays  to  her,  which  we  have  already  quoted,  in 
which  he  refers  to  her  '  good  qualities  and  many  accom- 
plishments,' but  the  other  pleasant  references  in  that 
book.  *  Henrietta,'  he  says  in  one  passage,  '  played  on 
the  guitar  ^  and  sang  a  Spanish  song,  to  the  great  delight 
of  John  Jones.'  When  climbing  Snowdon  he  is  keen 
in  his  praises  of  the  endurance  of  '  the  gallant  girl.'  As 
against  all  this,  there  is  an  undercurrent  of  depreciation 
of  his  stepdaughter  among  Borrow's  biographers.  The 
picture  of  Borrow's  home  in  later  life  at  Oulton  is 
presented  by  them  with  sordid  details.  The  Oulton 
tradition  which  still  survives  among  the  few  inhabitants 
who  lived  near  the  Broad  at  Borrow's  death  in  1881, 
and  still  reside  there,  is  of  an  ill-kept  home,  supremely 
untidy,  and  it  is  as  a  final  indictment  of  his  daughter's 

^  Henrietta's  guitar  is  now  in  my  possession  aud  is  a  very  handsome 
instrument. 

413 


414    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

callousness  that  we  have  the  following  gruesome 
picture  by  Dr.  Knapp  : 

On  the  26th  of  July  1881  Mr.  Borrow  was  found  dead  in  his 
house  at  Oulton.  The  circumstances  were  these.  His  step- 
daughter and  her  husband  drove  to  Lowestoft  in  the  morning  on 
some  business  of  their  own,  leaving  Mr.  Borrow  without  a  living 
soul  in  the  house  with  him.  He  had  earnestly  requested  them  not  to 
go  away  because  he  felt  that  he  was  in  a  dying  state;  but  the  response 
intimated  that  he  had  often  expressed  the  same  feeling  before,  and 
his  fears  had  proved  groundless.  During  the  interval  of  these  few 
hours  of  abandonment  nothing  can  palliate  or  excuse,  George 
Borrow  died  as  he  had  lived — alone!  His  age  was  seventy-eight 
years  and  twenty-one  days. 

Dr.  Knapp  no  doubt  believed  all  this ;  Mt  is  endorsed 
by  the  village  gossip  of  the  past  thirty  years,  and  the 
mythical  tragedy  is  even  heightened  by  a  further  story 
of  a  farm  tumbril  which  carried  poor  Borrow's  body  to 
the  railway  station  when  it  was  being  conveyed  to 
London  to  be  buried  beside  his  wife  in  Brompton 
Cemetery. 

The  tumbril  story — whether  correct  or  otherwise — 
is  a  matter  of  indifference  to  me.  The  legend  of  the 
neglect  of  Borrow  in  his  last  moments  is  however  of 
importance,  and  the  charge  can  easily  be  disproved.^ 
I  have  before  me  Mrs.  MacOubrey's  diary  for  1881. 

*  Henrietta  MacOubrey  put  every  difficulty  in  the  way  of  Dr.  Knapp,  and 
I  hold  many  letters  from  her  strongly  denouncing  his  Life. 

2  The  stories  against  Henrietta  MacOubrey  have  received  endorsement 
from  that  pleasant  writer  Mr.  W.  A.  Dutt,  who  has  long  lived  near  Lowes- 
toft. It  is  conveyed  in  such  a  communication  as  the  following  from  a 
correspondent :  '  After  Borrow's  death  Mr.  Reeve,  Curator  of  Norwich 
Castle  Museum,  visited  the  Oulton  house  with  the  Rev.  J.  Gunn  (died  28th 
May  1890),  having  some  idea  of  buying  Borrow's  books  for  the  Colman 
collection.  Mrs.  MacOubrey  wanted  £1000  for  them,  but  Mr.  Reeve  did  not 
think  them  worth  more  than  £200.  They  were,  however,  bought  by  Webber 
of  Ipswich,  who  soon  afterwards  entered  into  the  employment  of  Jarrold  of 
Norwich.  Mr.  Reeve  described  the  scene  as  one  of  rank  dilapidation  and 
decay — evidences  of  extreme  untidiness  and  neglect  everywhere.' 


HENRIETTA  CLARKE  415 

I  have  many  such  diaries  for  a  long  period  of  years, 

but   this   for    1881   is    of  particular   moment.      Here, 

under   the   date   July    26th,  we   find   the   brief  note, 

George  Bori^ow  died  at  three  o'clock  this  viorning.     It 

is  scarcely  possible  that  Borrow's  stepdaughter  and  her 

husband  could  have  left  him  alone  at  three  o'clock  in 

the  morning  in  order  to  drive  into  Lowestoft,  less  than 

two  miles  distant.     At  this  time,  be  it  remembered. 

Dr.  MacOubrey  was  eighty-one  years  of  age.     Now, 

as  to  the  general  untidiness  of  Borrow's  home  at  the 

time  of  his  death — the  point  is  a  distasteful  one,  but  it 

had  better  be  faced.     Henrietta  was  twenty-three  years 

of  age  when  her   mother  married  Borrow.     She  was 

sixty-four  at  the  time  of  his  death,  and  her  husband,  as 

I  have  said,  was  eighty-one  years  of  age  at  that  time, 

being  three  years  older  than  Borrow.     Here  we  have 

three  very  elderly  people  keeping  house  together  and 

little    accustomed     overmuch    to     the    assistance    of 

domestic  servants.    The  situation  at  once  becomes  clear. 

Mrs.  Borrow  had  a  genius  for  housekeeping  and  for 

management.     She   watched   over  her  husband,  kept 

his  accounts,  held  the  family  purse,^  managed  all  his 

affairs.     She  '  managed  '  her  daughter  also,  delighting 

in   that   daughter's    accomplishments  of  drawing  and 

botany,  to  which  may  be  added  a  zeal  for  the  writing  of 

stories  which  does  not  seem,  judging  from  the  many 

manuscripts  in  her  handwriting  that  I  have  burnt,  to 

have  received  much  editorial  encouragement.    In  short, 

Henrietta  was  not  domesticated.      But  just  as  I  have 

1  Mr.  Herbert  Jenkins  has  drawn  a  quite  wrong  conclusion — although 
natural  under  the  circumstances — from  a  letter  he  had  seen  in  which  Borrow 
asked  his  wife  for  money.  Mrs.  Borrow  kept  the  banking  account.  Moreover, 
it  is  not  generally  known  that  Borrow  completed  the  possession  of  his  wife's 
estate,  including  Oulton  Hall  farm  and  some  cottage  property,  with  the 
money  that  came  to  him  from  The  Bible  in  Spain. 


416    GEORGE  BORKOW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

proved  in  preceding  chapters  that  Borrow  was  happy  in 
his  married  life,  so  I  would  urge  that  as  far  as  a  some- 
what disappointed  career  would  permit  to  the  sadly 
bereaved  author  he  was  happy  in  his  family  circle  to  the 
end.  It  was  at  his  initiative  that,  when  he  had  returned 
to  Oulton  after  the  death  of  his  wife,  his  daughter 
and  her  husband  came  to  live  with  him.  He  declared 
that  to  live  alone  was  no  longer  tolerable,  and  they 
gave  up  their  own  home  in  London  to  join  him  at 
Oulton. 

A  new  glimpse  of  Borrow  on  his  domestic  side  has 
been  offered  to  the  public  even  as  this  book  is  passing 
through  the  press.  JNIr.  S.  H.  Baldrey,  a  Norwich 
solicitor,  has  given  his  reminiscences  of  the  author  of 
Lavengro  to  the  leading  newspaper  of  that  city.^ 
Mr.  Baldrey  is  the  stepson  of  the  late  John  Pilgrim 
of  the  firm  of  Jay  and  Pilgrim,  who  were  Borrow's 
solicitors  at  Norwich  in  the  later  years  of  his  life.  One 
at  least  of  Mr.  Baldrey 's  many  reminiscences  has  in  it 
an  element  of  romance ;  that  in  which  he  recalls  Mrs. 
Borrow  and  her  daughter ; 

Mrs.  Borrow  always  struck  me  as  a  dear  old  creature.  When 
Borrow  married  her  she  was  a  widow  with  one  daughter,  Henrietta 
Clarke.  The  old  lady  used  to  dress  in  black  silk.  She  had  little 
silver-grey  corkscrew  curls  down  the  side  of  her  face;  and  she  wore  a 
lace  cap  with  a  mauve  ribbon  on  top,  quite  in  the  Early  Victorian 
style.  I  remember  that  on  one  occasion  when  she  and  Miss  Clarke 
had  come  to  Brunswick  House  they  were  talking  with  my  mother 
in  the  temporary  absence  of  George  Borrow,  who,  so  far  as  I  can 
recall,  had  gone  into  another  room  to  discuss  business  with  John 
Pilgrim. 

'  Ah ! '  she  said,  '  George  is  a  good  man,  but  he  is  a  strange 
creature.     Do  you  know  he  will  say  to  me  after  breakfast,  "  Mary, 

^  'George  Borrow  Reminiscences'  in  The  Eastern  DaHy  Press,  July  Slj 
1913. 


HENRIETTA  CLARKE  417 

I  am  going  for  a  walk,"  and  then  I  do  not  see  anything  more  of 
him  for  three  months.  And  all  the  time  he  will  be  walking;  miles 
and  miles.  Once  he  went  right  into  Scotland,  and  never  once  slept 
in  a  house.  He  took  not  even  a  handbag  with  him  or  a  clean  shirt, 
but  lived  just  like  any  old  tramp.' 

Mr.  Baldrey  is  clearly  in  error  here,  or  shall  we  say 
that  Mrs.  Borrow  humorously  exaggerated  ?  We  have 
seen  that  Borrow's  annual  holiday  was  a  matter  of 
careful  arrangement,  and  his  knapsack  or  satchel  is  fre- 
quently referred  to  in  his  descriptions  of  his  various 
tours.  But  the  matter  is  of  little  importance,  and  Mr. 
Baldrey's  pictures  of  Borrow  are  excellent,  including 
that  of  his  personal  appearance  : 

As  I  recall  him,  he  was  a  fine,  powerfully  built  man  of  about 
six  feet  high.  He  had  a  clean-shaven  face  with  a  fresh  complexion, 
almost  approaching  to  the  florid,  and  never  a  wrinkle,  even  at 
sixty,  except  at  the  corners  of  his  dark  and  rather  prominent  eyes. 
He  had  a  shock  of  silvery  white  hair.  He  always  wore  a  very  badly 
brushed  silk  hat,  a  black  frock  coat  and  trousers,  the  coat  all 
buttoned  down  before ;  low  shoes  and  white  socks,  with  a  couple 
of  inches  of  white  showing  between  the  shoes  and  the  trousers. 
He  was  a  tireless  walker,  with  extraordinary  powers  of  endurance, 
and  was  also  very  handy  with  his  fists,  as  in  those  days  a  gentleman 
required  to  be,  more  than  he  does  now. 

Mr.  John  Pilgrim  lived  at  Brunswick  House,  on 
the  Newmarket  Road,  Norwich,  and  here  Borrow 
frequently  visited  him.  Mr.  Baldrey  recalls  one  par- 
ticular visit : 

I  have  a  curious  recollection  of  his  dining  one  night  at  Bruns- 
wick House,  John  Pilgrim,  who  was  a  careful,  abstemious  man, 
never  took  more  than  two  glasses  of  port  at  dinner.  '  John,'  said 
Borrow,  '  this  is  a  good  port.  I  prefer  Burgundy  if  you  can  get  it 
good  ;  but,  lord,  you  cannot  get  it  now."'  It  so  happened  that 
Mr.  Pilgrim  had  some  fine   old   Clos-Vougeot  in  the  cellar.     '  I 

2d 


418    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

think,'  said  he,  '  I  can  give  you  a  good  drop  of  Burgundy." 
A  bottle  was  sent  for,  and  Borrow  finished  it,  alone  and  unaided. 
'  Well,'  he  remarked,  '  I  think  this  is  a  good  Burgundy.     But  I  'm 


Hx 


<ft 


"Y^-"*^     (j«-|*vv^ 


.  titi*     Kmvk,     iijiH^ 


lflW-4    Ton 


A  LETTER  FROM  BORROW  TO  HIS  WIFE  WRITTEN  FROM  ROME 
IN  HIS  CONTINENTAL  JOURNEY  OF  1844 

not  quite  certain.  I  should  like  to  try  a  little  more.'  Another 
bottle  was  called  up,  and  the  guest  finished  it  to  the  last  drop. 
I  am  still,'  he  said,  '  not  quite  sure  about  it,  but  I  shall  know  in 
the  morning.'  The  next  morning  Mr.  Pilgrim  and  I  were  leaving 
for  the  office,  when  Borrow  came  up  the  garden  path  waving  his 


HENRIETTA  CLARKE  419 

arms  like  a  windmill.  '  Oh,  John,''  he  said,  '  that  xvas  Burgundy  ! 
When  I  woke  up  this  morning  it  was  coursing  through  my  veins 
like  fire.'  And  yet  Borrow  was  not  a  man  to  drink  to  excess.  I 
cannot  imagine  him  being  the  worse  for  liquor.  He  had  wonder- 
ful health  and  digestion.  Neither  a  gourmand  nor  a  gourmet, 
he  could  take  down  anything,  and  be  none  the  worse  for  it.  I 
don't  think  you  could  have  made  him  drunk  if  you  tried. 

And  here   is  a  glimpse  of  Borrow  after   his    wife's 
death,  for  which  we  are  grateful  to  Mr.  Baldrey : 

After  the  funeral  of  Mrs.  Borrow  he  came  to  Norwich  and 
took  me  over  to  Oulton  with  him.  He  was  silent  all  the  way. 
When  we  got  to  the  little  white  wicket  gate  before  the  approach 
to  the  house  he  took  off  his  hat  and  began  to  beat  his  breast  like 
an  Oriental.  He  cried  aloud  all  the  way  up  the  path.  He 
calmed  himself,  however,  by  the  time  that  Mr.  Crabbe  had 
opened  the  door  and  asked  us  in.  Crabbe  brought  in  some  wine, 
and  we  all  sat  down  to  table.  I  sat  opposite  to  Mrs.  Crabbe ; 
her  husband  was  on  my  left  hand.  Borrow  sat  at  one  end  of  the 
table,  and  the  chair  at  the  opposite  end  was  left  vacant.  We 
were  talking  in  a  casual  way  when  Borrow,  pointing  to  the  empty 
chair,  said  with  profound  emotion,  '  There  !  It  was  there  that  I 
first  saw  her.'  It  was  a  curious  coincidence  that  though  there  were 
four  of  us  we  should  have  left  that  particular  seat  unoccupied  at 
a  little  table  of  about  four  feet  square.^ 


^  Mr.   Baldrey  also  gives  us  reminiscences   of    Borrow's   prowess  as   a 
swimmer : 

'  It  was  one  of  the  signs  of  his  perfect  health  and  vigour  that  he  was  a 
fine  swimmer.  On  one  occasion  George  Jay  and  John  Pilgrim  were  out  for 
a  sail  in  Jay's  old  yacht,  the  Widgeon.  Becalmed,  they  were  drifting  some- 
where down  by  Reedham,  when  suddenly  Borrow  said,  "  George,  how  deep 
is  it  here.''"  "  About  twenty-two  feet,  sir,"  said  George  Jay.  The  partners 
always  called  him  "sir."  "George,"  said  Borrow,  "I  am  going  to  the 
bottom."  Straightway  he  stripped,  dived,  and  presently  came  up  with  a 
handful  of  mud  and  weeds.  "There,  George,"  he  said,  "I've  been  to  the 
bottom."  Some  time  in  1872  or  1873,  for  Borrow  was  then  sixty-nine,  my 
mother  and  I  were  walking  on  the  beach  at  Lowestoft,  when  just  round 
the  Ness  Light  we  met  Borrow  coming  towards  us  from  the  Corton  side. 
He  got  hold  of  my  shoulder,  and,  pointing  to  the  big  black  buoy  beyond 


420    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

But  this  is  a  lengthy  digression  from  the  story  of 
Henrietta  Clarke,  who  married  William  MacOubrey, 
an  Irishman — and  an  Orangeman — from  Belfast  in 
1865.  The  pair  lived  first  in  Belfast  and  afterwards 
at  80  Charlotte  Street,  Fitzroy  Square.  Before  his 
marriage  he  had  practised  at  134  Sloane  Street,  London. 
MacOubrey,  although  there  has  been  some  doubt  cast 
upon  the  statement,  was  a  Doctor  of  Medicine  of  Trinity 
College,  Dublin,  and  a  Barrister-at-Law.  Within  his 
limitations  he  was  an  accomplished  man,  and  before  me 
lie  not  only  documentary  evidence  of  his  M.D.  and 
his  legal  status,  but  several  printed  pamphlets  that  bear 

the  Ness,  he  said,  "There  !  Do  you  see  that?  I  have  just  been  out  there. 
I  have  not  been  back  many  minutes."  At  the  age  of  nearly  seventy  he  had 
been  round  the  Ness  Buoy  and  home  again — a  wonderful  performance  if,  in 
addition  to  his  age,  you  remember  the  dangerous  set  of  the  currents  there- 
abouts.' 

There  is  also  a  story,  which  comes  to  me  from  another  quarter,  of  Borrow 
skating  upon  the  ice  of  Oulton  Broad  a  few  months  before  his  death,  and 
remarking  that  he  had  not  skated  since  he  was  in  Russia.  The  following 
passage  from  Mr.  Baldrey's  narrative  is  interesting  as  showing  that  Borrow 
did  not  in  later  life  quite  lose  sight  of  his  birthplace  : 

'  Apparently  I  interested  him  in  some  way,  for  twice  while  I  was  at 
school  at  East  Dereham  he  came  over  specially  to  take  me  out  for  the 
afternoon.  He  had  ascertained  from  my  mother  which  were  the  school 
half-holidays,  and  purposely  chose  those  days  so  that  I  might  be  free.  We 
would  start  off  at  half-past  twelve  and  return  at  bedtime.  Where  we  went 
I  could  not  tell  you  for  certain,  but  I  know  that  once  we  went  through 
Seaming  and  once  through  Mattishall.  What  we  talked  about  of  course  I 
cannot  recall,  for  I  was  then  a  boy  between  13  and  16  years  of  age,  and  I 
had  no  sort  of  inkling  that  my  companion  was  even  then  a  celebrity  and 
destined  to  be  a  still  greater  one  in  the  future.  But  I  do  remember  that 
sometimes  I  could  not  get  a  word  out  of  him  for  an  hour  or  more,  and  that 
then  suddenly  he  would  break  out  with  all  sorts  of  questions.  "  I  wonder  if 
you  can  see  what  I  can,"  he  once  i-emarked.  "  Do  you  see  that  the  gypsies 
have  been  here.''"  "No,"  I  replied.  "  And  you  are  not  likely  to,"  said  he. 
And'then  he^would  tell  me  no  more.  He  was  rather  prone  to  arouse  one's 
curiosity  and  refuse  to  pursue  the  subject.  I  do  not  mean  that  he  was 
morose.  Far  from  it.  He  was  always  very  kind  to  me.  After  I  had  left 
school  and  returned  to  Norwich  he  frequently  called  for  me  and  took  me  out 
with  him.     Once  or  twice  I  went  with  him  to  Lowestoft.' 


HENRIETTA  CLARKE  421 

his  name/  What  is  of  more  importance,  the  many 
letters  from  and  to  his  wife  that  have  passed  through 
my  hands  and  have  been  consigned  to  the  flames  prove 
that  husband  and  wife  Hved  on  most  affectionate 
terms. 

It  is  natural  that  Sorrow's  correspondence  with  his 
stepdaughter  should  have  been  of  a  somewhat  private 
character,  and  I  therefore  publish  only  a  selection  from 
his  letters  to  her,  believing  however  that  they  will 
modify  an  existing  tradition  very  considerably : 


To  Mrs.  MacOubrey 

Dear  Henrietta, — Have  you  heard  from  the  gentleman  whom 
you  said  you  would  write  to  about  the  farm  ?  ^  Mr.  C.  came  over 
the  other  day  and  I  mentioned  the  matter  to  him,  but  he  told  me 
that  he  was  on  the  eve  of  going  to  London  on  law  business  and 
should  be  absent  for  some  time.  His  son  is  in  Cambridge.  I  am 
afraid  that  it  will  be  no  easy  matter  to  find  a  desirable  tenant  and 
that  none  are  likely  to  apply  but  a  set  of  needy  speculators  ; 
indeed,  there  is  a  general  dearth  of  money.  How  is  Dr.  M.  ?  God 
bless  you  !  George  Borrow. 


To  Mrs.  INIacOubrey 

Dear  Henrietta, — I  have  received  some  of  the  rent  and  send 
a  cheque  for  eight  pounds.  Have  the  kindness  to  acknowledge  the 
receipt  of  same  by  return  of  post.  As  soon  as  you  arrive  in 
London,  let  me  know,  and  I  will  send  a  cheque  for  ten  pounds, 


1  One  of  them  is  entitled  The  Present  Crisis :  The  True  Cause  of  Our 
Indian  Troubles,  by  William  MacOubrey  of  the  Middle  Temple.  There  are 
also  countless  pamphlets  in  manuscript.  MacOubrey  was  an  enthusiastic 
and  indeed  truculent  upholder  of  the  Act  of  Union. 

^  The  farm  referred  to  was  Oulton  Hall  farm,  often  referred  to  as 
Oulton  Hall. 


422    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

which  I  believe  will  pay  your  interest  up  to  Midsummer.  If  there 
is  anything  incorrect  pray  inform  me.  God  bless  you.  Kind 
regards  to  Miss  Harvey.  George  Borrow. 


To  Mrs.  MacOubrey 

Dear  Henrietta, — As  soon  as  Smith  has  paid  his  Michaelmas 
rent  I  will  settle  your  interest  up  to  Midsummer.  Twenty-one 
pounds  was,  I  think,  then  due  to  you,  as  you  received  five  pounds 
on  the  account  of  the  present  year.  If,  however,  you  are  in  want 
of  money  let  me  know  forthwith,  and  I  will  send  you  a  small  cheque. 
The  document  which  I  mentioned  has  been  witnessed  by  Mrs. 
Church  and  her  daughter.  It  is  in  one  of  the  little  tin  boxes  on 
the  lower  shelf  of  the  closet  nearest  to  the  window  in  my  bedroom. 
I  was  over  at  Mattishall  some  weeks  ago.  Things  there  look  very 
unsatisfactory.  H.  and  his  mother  now  owe  me  £^0  or  more. 
The  other  man  a  year's  rent  for  a  cottage  and  garden,  and  two 
years'  rent  for  the  gardens  of  two  cottages  unoccupied.  I  am  just 
returned  from  Norwich  where  I  have  been  to  speak  to  F.  I  have 
been  again  pestered  by  Pilgrim's  successor  about  the  insurance  of 
the  property.  He  pretends  to  have  insured  again.  A  more 
impudent  thing  was  probably  never  heard  of.  He  is  no  agent  of 
mine,  and  I  will  have  no  communication  with  him.  I  have  insured 
myself  in  the  Union  Office,  and  have  lately  received  my  second 
policy.  I  have  now  paid  upwards  of  twelve  pounds  for  policies. 
F.  says  that  he  told  him  months  ago  that  the  demand  he  made 
would  not  be  allowed,  that  I  insured  myself  and  was  my  own  agent, 
and  that  as  he  shall  see  him  in  a  few  days  he  will  tell  him  so  again. 
Oh  what  a  source  of  trouble  that  wretched  fellow  Pilgrim  has  been 
both  to  you  and  me. 

I  wish  very  much  to  come  up  to  London.  But  I  cannot  leave 
the  country  under  present  circumstances.  There  is  not  a  person 
in  these  parts  in  whom  I  can  place  the  slightest  confidence.  I 
must  inform  you  that  at  our  interview  F.  said  not  a  word  about 
the  matter  in  Chancery.  God  bless  you.  Kind  remembrances  to 
Dr.  M.  George  Borrow. 


HENRIETTA  CLAllKE  423 

To  Mrs.  MacOubrey 

Dear  Henrietta, — I  wish  to  know  how  you  are.  I  shall 
shortly  send  a  cheque  for  thirteen  pounds,  which  I  believe  will 
settle  the  interest  account  up  to  Michaelmas.  If  you  see  anything 
inaccurate  pray  inform  me.  I  am  at  present  tolerably  well,  but  of 
late  have  been  very  much  troubled  with  respect  to  my  people. 
Since  I  saw  you  I  have  been  three  times  over  to  Mattishall,  but 
with  very  little  profit.  The  last  time  I  was  there  I  got  the  key  of 
the  house  from  that  fellow  Hill,  and  let  the  place  to  another 
person  who  I  am  now  told  is  not  much  better.  One  comfort  is  that 
he  cannot  be  worse.  But  now  there  is  a  difficulty.  Hill  refuses 
to  yield  up  the  land,  and  has  put  padlocks  on  the  gates.  These  I 
suppose  can  be  removed  as  he  is  not  in  possession  of  the  key  of  the 
house.  On  this  point,  however,  I  wish  to  be  certain.  As  for  the 
house,  he  and  his  mother,  who  is  in  a  kind  of  partnership  with 
him,  have  abandoned  it  for  two  years,  the  consequence  being  that 
the  windows  are  dashed  out,  and  the  place  little  better  than  a 
ruin.  During  the  four  years  he  has  occupied  the  land  he  has  been 
cropping  it,  and  the  crops  have  invariably  been  sold  before  being 
reaped,  and  as  soon  as  reaped  carried  off.  During  the  last  two 
years  there  has  not  been  a  single  live  thing  kept  on  the  premises, 
not  so  much  as  a  hen.  He  now  says  that  there  are  some  things  in 
the  house  belonging  to  him.  Anything,  however,  which  he  has 
left  is  of  course  mine,  though  I  don't  believe  that  what  he  has  left 
is  worth  sixpence.  I  have  told  the  incoming  tenant  to  deliver  up 
nothing,  and  not  permit  him  to  enter  the  house  on  any  account. 
He  owes  me  ten  or  twelve  pounds,  arrears  of  rent,  and  at  least 
fifteen  for  dilapidations.  I  think  the  fellow  ought  to  be  threatened 
with  an  action,  but  I  know  not  whom  to  employ.  I  don't  wish  to 
apply  to  F.  Perhaps  Dr.  M.'s  London  friend  might  be  spoken  to. 
I  believe  Hill's  address  is  Alfred  Hill,  Mattishall,  Norfolk,  but  the 
place  which  he  occupied  of  me  is  at  Mattishall  Burgh.  I  shall  be 
glad  to  hear  from  you  as  soon  as  is  convenient.  I  have  anything 
but  reason  to  be  satisfied  with  the  conduct  of  S.  He  is  cropping 
the  ground  most  unmercifully,  and  is  sending  sacks  of  game  off  the 
premises  every  week.  Surely  he  must  be  mad,  as  he  knows  I  can 
turn  him  out  next  Michaelmas.  God  bless  you.  Kind  regards  to 
Dr.  M.     Take  care  of  this.  George  Borrow. 


424    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 


To  Mrs.  MacOubrey 

Dear  Henrietta, — I  was  glad  to  hear  that  you  had  obtained 
your  dividend.  I  was  afraid  that  you  would  never  get  it.  I  shall 
be  happy  to  see  you  and  Dr.  M.  about  the  end  of  the  month. 
Michaelmas  is  near  at  hand,  when  your  half-year's  interest  becomes 
due.     God  bless  you.     Kind  remembrances  to  Dr.  M. 

George  Borrow, 


OuLTON,  Lowestoft,  November  29th,  1874. 

Dear  Henrietta, — I  send  a  cheque  for  <£*15,  which  will  settle 
the  interest  account  up  to  Michaelmas  last.  On  receipt  of  this 
have  the  kindness  to  send  me  a  line.  I  have  been  to  Norwich, 
and  now  know  all  about  your  affair,  I  saw  Mr.  Durrant,  who, 
it  seems,  is  the  real  head  of  the  firm  to  which  I  go.  He  received 
me  in  the  kindest  manner,  and  said  he  was  very  glad  to  see  me. 
I  inquired  about  J.P.'s  affairs.  He  appeared  at  first  not  desirous 
to  speak  about  them,  but  presently  became  very  communicative. 
I  inquired  who  had  put  the  matter  into  Chancery,  and  he  told 
me  he  himself,  which  I  was  very  glad  to  hear,  I  asked  whether 
the  mortgagees  would  get  their  money,  and  he  replied  that  he 
had  no  doubt  they  eventually  would,  as  far  as  principal  was 
concerned,  I  spoke  about  interest,  but  on  that  point  he  gave 
me  slight  hopes.  He  said  that  the  matter,  if  not  hurried,  would 
turn  out  tolerably  satisfactory,  but  if  it  were,  very  little  would 
be  obtained.  It  appears  that  the  unhappy  creature  who  is  gone 
had  been  dabbling  in  post  obit  bonds,  at  present  almost  valueless, 
but  likely  to  become  available.  He  was  in  great  want  of  money 
shortly  before  he  died.  Now,  dear,  pray  keep  up  your  spirits ; 
I  hope  and  trust  we  shall  meet  about  Christmas.  Kind  regards 
to  Dr.  M.  George  Borrow, 

Keep  this.     Send  a  line  by  return  of  post. 


To  Mrs.  MacOubrey 

Dear  Henrietta, — I  thought  I  would  write  to  you  as  it  seems 
a  long  time  since  I  heard  from  you,     I  have  been  on  my  expedi- 


HENRIETTA  CT.ARKE  425 

tion  and  have  come  back  safe.  I  had  a  horrible  time  of  it 
on  the  sea — small  dirty  boat  crowded  with  people  and  rough 
weather.  Poor  Mr.  Brightwell  is  I  am  sorry  to  say  dead — died 
in  January.  I  saw  Mr.  J.  and  P.  and  had  a  good  deal  of  conver- 
sation with  them  which  I  will  talk  to  you  about  when  I  see  you. 
Mr.  P.  sent  an  officer  over  to  M.  I  went  to  Oulton,  and  as  soon 
as  I  got  there  I  found  one  of  the  farm  cottages  nearly  in  ruins ; 
the  gable  had  fallen  down — more  expense !  but  I  said  that  some 
willow  trees  must  be  cut  down  to  cover  it.  The  place  upon  the 
whole  looks  very  beautiful.  C.  full  of  complaints,  though  I 
believe  he  has  a  fine  time  of  it.  He  and  T.  are  at  daggers 
drawn.  I  am  sorry  to  tell  you  that  poor  Mr.  Leathes  is  dying — 
called,  but  could  not  see  him,  but  he  sent  down  a  kind  message 
to  me.  ,The  family,  however,  were  rejoiced  to  see  me  and 
wanted  me  to  stay.  The  scoundrel  of  a  shoemaker  did  not 
send  the  shoes.  I  thought  he  would  not.  The  shirt- collars 
were  much  too  small.  I,  however,  managed  to  put  on  the  shirts 
and  am  glad  of  them.  At  Norwich  I  saw  Lucy,  who  appears  to 
be  in  good  spirits.  Many  people  have  suffered  dreadfully  there 
from  the  failure  of  the  Bank — her  brother,  amongst  others,  has 
been  let  in.  I  shall  have  much  to  tell  you  when  I  see  you. 
I  am  glad  that  the  Prussians  are  getting  on  so  famously.  The 
Pope  it  seems  has  written  a  letter  to  the  King  of  Prussia  and  is 
asking  favours  of  him.  A  low  old  fellow ! ! !  Remember  me 
kindly  to  Miss  H,,  and  may  God  bless  you !     Bring  this  back. 

George  Borrow. 


To  Mrs.  MacOubrey 

March  Q,  1873. 

Dear  Henrietta, — I  was  so  grieved  to  hear  that  you  were 
unwell.  Pray  take  care  of  yourself,  and  do  not  go  out  in  this 
dreadful  weather.  Send  and  get,  on  my  account,  six  bottles  of 
good  port  wine.  Good  port  may  be  had  at  the  cellar  at  the 
corner  of  Charles  Street,  opposite  the  Hospital  near  Hereford 
Square — I  think  the  name  of  the  man  is  Kitchenham.  Were  I 
in  London  I  would  bring  it  myself.  Do  send  for  it.  May  God 
Almighty  bless  you  !  George  Borrow. 


426    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

To  Mrs.  MacOubrey 

Norwich,  July  12,  1873. 
Dear  Henrietta, — I  shall  be  glad  to  see  you  and  Dr.  M.  as 
soon  as  you  can  make  it  convenient  to  come.  As  for  my  coming 
up  to  London  it  is  quite  out  of  the  question.  I  am  suffering 
greatly,  and  here  I  am  in  this  solitude  without  medicine  or 
advice.  I  want  very  much  to  pay  you  up  your  interest.  I  can 
do  so  without  the  slightest  inconvenience.  I  have  money.  It 
is  well  I  have,  as  it  seems  to  be  almost  my  only  friend.  God 
bless  you.     Kind  regards  to  Dr.  M.  George  Borrow. 

Here  I  find  a  letter  from  Mrs.  MacOubrey  to  her 
stepfather : 

To  George  Borrow,  Esq. 

SouTHGATE  HousE,  BuRY  Sx.  Edmunds,  Novbv.  25th,  1873. 

My  beloved  Friend, — I  sincerely  trust  that  you  are  well,  and 
received  my  letter  which  I  sent  about  ten  days  ago.  Miss  Harvey 
is  pretty  well  and  very  kind,  and  it  really  is  a  great  pleasure  to 
be  here  during  the  dark  foggy  month  of  November,  the  most 
disagreeable  in  London.  I  saw  Miss  Beevor  the  other  day ;  she 
is  confined  to  the  house  with  rheumatism  and  a  strain ;  she  was 
so  pleased  to  see  me,  and  talked  about  the  Images  of  Mildenhall. 
They  now  set  up  for  the  great  county  gentry ;  give  very  grand 
entertainments,  dinners,  etc.,  and  go  also  to  grand  dinners,  so 
their  time  is  fully  taken  up  going  and  receiving;  they  never 
scarce  honour  the  little  paltry  town  of  Bury  St.  Edmunds.  Bloom- 
field,  the  old  butler,  is  gone  to  service  again  ;  he  could  not  bear 
himself  without  horses,  so  he  is  gone  to  the  Wigsons,  near  Bury, 
where  he  will  have  plenty  of  hunters  to  look  after ;  he  wished  to 
live  with  Miss  Harvey. 

Poor  Miss  Borton  died  about  a  week  ago ;  she  did  not  live 
long  to  enjoy  the  huge  fortune  her  brother  left.  Bury  seems 
very  much  changing  its  inhabitants,  but  there  are  still  some  nice 
people.  I  shall  always  like  it  while  dear  Miss  Harvey  lives ;  she 
is  so  very  kind  to  me.  It  is  extremely  cold,  but  we  keep  tre- 
mendous fires,  which  combats  it. 

I  do  sincerely  trust,  dear,  that  you  are  well.     I  should  like  to 


HENRIETTA  CLARKE  427 

have  a  line  just  to  say  liow  you  are.  I  return  to  London  about 
the  6th  of  Decbr.,  not  later,  but  you  see  Miss  Harvey  likes  to 
keep  me  as  long  as  she  can,  and  I  am  very  happy  with  her,  but  at 
that  time  I  shall  be  sure  to  be  at  home.  If  you  were  going  up  to 
London  I  would  leave  sooner.  If  you  want  any  medicine  or  any- 
thing, only  let  me  know  and  you  shall  have  it. 

Accept  my  most  afFec.  love,  and  believe  me  ever,  your  attached 
daughter,  Henrietta  MacOubrey. 

P.S. — Miss  Harvey  desires  her  kind  regards.  May  God  bless 
you. 

To  Mrs.  MacOubrey,  50  Charlotte  Street,  Fitzroy 

Square,  London 

OuLTON,  Lowestoft,  April  1,  1874. 

Dear  Henrietta, — I  have  received  your  letter  of  the  30th 
March.  Since  I  last  wrote  I  have  not  been  well.  I  have  had  a 
great  pain  in  the  left  jaw  which  almost  prevented  me  from  eating. 
I  am,  however,  better  now.  I  shall  be  glad  to  see  you  and  Dr.  M. 
as  soon  as  you  can  conveniently  come.  Send  me  a  line  to  say 
when  I  may  expect  you.  I  have  no  engagements.  Before  you 
come  call  at  No.  36  to  inquire  whether  anything  has  been  sent 
there.  Leverton  had  better  be  employed  to  make  a  couple  of 
boxes  or  cases  for  the  books  in  the  sacks.  The  sacks  can  be  put 
on  the  top  in  the  inside.  There  is  an  old  coat  in  one  of  the  sacks 
in  the  pocket  of  which  are  papers.  Let  it  be  put  in  with  its 
contents  just  as  it  is.  I  wish  to  have  the  long  white  chest  and 
the  two  deal  boxes  also  brought  down.  Buy  me  a  thick  under- 
waistcoat  like  that  I  am  now  wearing,  and  a  lighter  one  for  the 
summer.  Worsted  socks  are  of  no  use — they  scarcely  last  a  day. 
Cotton  ones  are  poor  things,  but  they  are  better  than  worsted. 
Kind  regards  to  Dr.  M.     God  bless  you  ! 

Return  me  this  when  you  come.  George  Borrow. 

To  Mrs.  MacOubrey,  50  Charlotte  Street,  Fitzroy 

Square,  London 

OuLTON,  Nov.  14,  1876. 
Dear  Henrietta, — You  may  buy  me  a  large  silk  handkerchief, 


428    GEORGE  BOUROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

like  the  one  you  brought  before.     I  shall  be  glad  to  see  you  and 
Dr.  M.     I  am  very  unwell.  George  Borrow. 

To  Mrs.  MacOubrey 

Dear  Henrietta, — I  shall  be  glad  to  see  you  and  Dr.  M.  as 
soon  as  you  can  make  it  convenient.  In  a  day  or  two  the  house 
will  be  in  good  repair  and  very  comfortable.  I  want  you  to  go 
to  the  bank  and  have  the  cheque  placed  to  my  account.  Lady 
Day  is  nigh  at  hand,  and  it  must  be  seen  after.  Buy  for  me  a 
pair  of  those  hollow  ground  razors  and  tell  Dr.  M.  to  bring  a  little 
laudanum.  Come  if  you  can  on  the  first  of  March.  It  is  dear 
Mama's  birthday.     God  bless  you  !     Kind  regards  to  Dr.  M. 

George  Borrow. 

To  Mrs.  JNIacOubrey,  50  Charlotte  Street,  Fitzroy 

Square,  London 

Mrs.  Church's,  Lady's  Lane,  Norwich,  Feb.  28,  1877. 
Dear  Henrietta, — I  received  your  letter  this  morning  with 
the  document.  The  other  came  to  hand  at  Oulton  before  I  left. 
I  showed  Mr.  F.  the  first  document  on  Wednesday,  and  he 
expressed  then  a  doubt  with  regard  to  the  necessity  of  an  affidavit 
from  me,  but  he  said  it  would  perhaps  be  necessary  for  him  to  see 
the  security.  I  saw  him  again  this  morning  and  he  repeated 
the  same  thing.  To-night  he  is  going  to  write  up  to  his  agent 
on  the  subject,  and  on  Monday  I  am  to  know  what  is  requisite  to 
be  done — therefore  pray  keep  in  readiness.  On  Tuesday,  perhaps, 
I  shall  return  to  Oulton,  but  I  don't  know.  I  shall  write  again 
on  Monday.     God  bless  you.  George  Borrow. 


Borrow  died,  as  we  have  seen,  in  1881,  and  was 
buried  by  the  side  of  his  wife  in  Brompton  Cemetery. 
By  his  will,  dated  1st  December  1880,  he  be- 
queathed all  his  property  to  his  stepdaughter,  making 
his  friend,  Elizabeth  Harvey,  her  co-executrix.  The 
will,  a  copy  of  which  is  before  me,  has  no  public 
interest,    but   it   may    be    noted    that    Miss    Harvey 


HENRIETTA  CLARKE  429 

refused  to  act,  as  the  following  letter  to  Mrs.    Mae- 
Oubrey  testifies  ^ : 


To  Mrs.  MacOubrey 

Bury  St.  Edmunds,  August  I3th. 

My  dearest  Henrietta, — I  was  just  preparing  to  write  to  you 
when  yours  arrived  together  with  Mrs.  Reeve's  despatch.  You 
know  how  earnestly  I  desire  your  welfare — but  hecmise  I  do  so  I 
earnestly  advise  you  immediately  to  exercise  the  right  you  have  of 
appointing  another  trustee  in  my  place.  I  am  sure  it  will  be  best 
for  you.  You  ought  to  have  a  trustee  at  least  not  older  than 
yourself,  and  one  who  has  health  and  strength  for  discharging  the 
office.  I  knoxv  what  are  the  duties  of  a  trustee.  There 's  ahcays 
a  considerable  responsibility  involved  in  the  discharge  of  the 
duties  of  a  trustee — and  it  may  easily  occur  that  great  responsi- 
bility may  be  thrown  on  them,  and  it  may  become  an  anxious 
business  fit  only  for  those  who  have  youth  and  health  and 
strength  of  mind,  and  are  likely  to  live. 

My  dear  friend,  you  do  not  like  to  realise  the  old  age  of  your 

^  Another  letter  from  Miss  Harvey,  dated  1st  August,  is  one  of  sympathy, 
and  there  are  passages  in  it  that  may  well  be  taken  to  heart  when  it  is  con- 
sidered that  Miss  Harvey  was  the  most  intimate  friend  of  Borrow  and  his 

stepdaughter : 

'  Bury,  August  \st,  1881. 

'  Dkarest  Friend, — Though  I  cannot  be  with  you  in  your  trouble  I  am 
continually  thinking  of  you,  and  praying  that  all  needful  help  and  comfort 
may  be  sent  to  you  as  you  need  and  how  you  need  it.  I  have  no  means  of 
hearing  any  particulars,  and  am  most  anxious  to  know  how  you  do,  and 
how  you  have  got  through  the  last  painful  week.  Whenever  you  feel  able 
write  me  a  few  words,  I  await  them  with  much  anxiety.  When  you  are  able 
to  realise  the  reality  of  his  eternal  gain — you  will  feel  that  all  is  well.  A 
great  spirit,  a  great  and  noble  spirit,  has  passed  from  the  earth,  his  earthly 
tabernacle  is  taken  down  to  be  raised  again — glorious  and  immortal,  a  fitting 
abode  for  a  spirkt  of  the  just  made  perfect.  How  wonderful  are  those  words, 
"  made  perfect."  We  are  even  now  part  of  that  grand  assembly  where  they 
dwell.  "  We  are  come  to  the  general  assembly  and  church  of  the  first  born 
which  are  written  in  heaven.  To  God  the  judge  of  all,  to  Jesus  the  Media- 
tor, to  an  innumerable  company  of  angels,  etc. ,  to  the^jsjnY.v  of  the  just  made 
perfect."     Let  us  realise  our  communion  with  them  even  now,  and  soon  to 


430    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

dear  friends,  but  you  must  consider  that  I  am  quite  past  the  age 
for  such  an  office,  and  my  invalid  state  often  prevents  my  attend- 
ing to  my  own  small  affairs.  I  have  no  relation  or  confidential 
friend  who  can  act  for  me.  My  executors  were  Miss  Venn  and 
John  Venn.  Miss  Venn  departed  last  February  to  a  better  land, 
John  is  in  such  health  with  heart  disease  that  he  cannot  move  far 
from  his  home — he  writes  as  one  ready  and  desiring  to  depart.  I 
do  not  expect  to  see  him  again.  So  you  see,  my  dearest  friend,  I 
am  not  able  to  undertake  this  trusteeship,  and  I  think  the  sooner 
you  consult  Mrs.  Reeve  as  to  the  appointment  of  another  trustee 
— the  better  it  will  be — and  the  more  permanent.  Had  I  known 
it  was  Mr.  Borrow's  intention  to  put  down  my  name  I  should  have 
prevented  it,  and  he  would  have  seen  that  an  aged  and  invalid 
lady  was  not  the  person  to  carry  out  his  wishes — for  I  am  quite 
unable. 

I  pray  that  a  fit  person   may  be  induced   to    undertake  the 

meet  them  on  the  Resurrection  Morn — when  they  who  sleep  in  Jesus  will 
God  bring  with  Him  .   .  .  and  so  we  shall  be  ever  with  the  Lord. 

Ever  with  the  Lord, 

Amen,  so  let  it  be, 
Life  from  the  dead  is  in  that  word, 

'Tis  immortality. 

Blessed  are  the  dead  which  die  in  the  Lord,  their  works  do  follow  them. 
Your  beloved  father's  work  in  Spain  will  follow  him.  His  efforts  to  spread 
the  word  of  God  in  that  benighted  land,  ever  has  and  ever  will  bring  forth 
blessed  fruits.  Dearest  Henrietta,  be  comforted,  you  have  been  a  most 
devoted  daughter  to  him,  and  latterly  his  greatest  earthly  comfort ;  your 
dear  husband  also  ;  and  together  you  have  tended  him  to  the  last.  He  now 
rests  in  peace.  All  the  sufferings  of  mind  and  body  are  over  for  ever.  You 
will  have  much  earthly  business  on  your  hands.  I  pray  that  you  may  be 
directed  in  all  things  by  true  wisdom.  The  time  is  short,  we  must  set  our 
houses  in  order,  that  we  may  not  be  unnecessarily  burdened  with  earthly 
cares.     Having  food  and  raiment,  let  us  be  therewith  content. 

'  Let  us  be  without  carefulness,  and  so  quietly  and  piously  spend  the 
remnant  of  our  days — ever  growing  in  the  knowledge  of  Christ,  and  finding 
in  Him  all  our  comfort  and  all  our  joy,  and  when  our  own  time  of  departure 
shall  arrive  may  we  be  ready  and  able  to  say,  "  1  have  a  desire  to  depart  and 
be  with  Christ,  which  is  far  better."  The  path  of  the  just  is  as  the  shining 
light  which  shineth  more  and  more  unto  the  perfect  day.  May  our  path  be 
so  lighted  up — until  the  day  break  and  the  shadows  flee  away.  Dearest 
friend,  do  write  soon.  I  am  so  anxious  to  hear  how  Dr.  IvlacOubrey  is. — 
Your  most  aflrect.  friend,  E.  Harvey. 


HENRIETTA  CLARKE  431 

business,  and  that  it  may  please  God  so  to  order  all  for  your 
good.  It  is  indeed  the  greatest  mercy  that  your  dear  husband  is 
well  enough  to  afford  you  such  help  and  such  comfort.  Pray  hire 
a  proper  servant  who  will  obey  orders. — In  haste,  ever  yrs.  affec- 
tionately, E.  Harvey. 

Another  letter  that  has  some  bearing  upon 
Borrow's  last  days  is  worth  printing  here  : 

To  Mrs.  MacOubrey 

Yarmouth,  August  19,  1881. 

My  dear  Mrs.  MacOubkey, — I  was  very  sorry  indeed  to  hear 
of  Mr.  Borrow's  death.  I  thought  he  looked  older  the  last  time  I 
saw  him,  but  with  his  vigorous  constitution  I  have  not  thought 
the  end  so  near.  You  and  Mr.  MacOubrey  have  the  comfort  of 
knowing  that  you  have  attended  affectionately  to  his  declining 
years,  which  would  otherwise  have  been  very  lonely.  I  have  been 
abroad  for  a  short  time,  and  this  has  prevented  me  from  replying 
to  your  kind  letter  before.  Pray  receive  the  assurance  of  my 
sympathy,  and  with  my  kind  remembrances  to  Mr.  MacOubrey, 
believe  me,  yours  very  truly,  R.  H.  Inglis  Palgkave. 

Three  years  later  Dr.  MacOubrey  died  in  his 
eighty-fourth  year,  and  was  interred  at  Oulton.  Mrs. 
MacOubrey  lived  for  a  time  at  Oulton  and  then  re- 
moved to  Yarmouth.  A  letter  that  she  wrote  to  a 
friend  soon  after  the  death  of  her  husband  is  perhaps 
some  index  to  her  character : 

Oulton  Cottage,  Oulton,  Nr.  Lowestoft,  Sept.  3rd,  1884. 
My  dear  Sir, — I  beg  to  thank  you  for  your  kind  thought  of 
me.  On  Sunday  night  the  24th  Augst.,  it  pleased  God  to  take 
from  me  my  excellent  and  beloved  husband — his  age  was  nearly 
84.  He  sunk  simply  from  age  and  weakness.  1  was  his  nurse 
bv  night  and  by  day,  administering  constant  nourishment,  but 
he  became  weaker  and  weaker,  till  at  last  '  The  silver  cord  was 


432    GEORGE  BORllOW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

loosed.'  My  dear  father  died  about  this  time  three  years  since, 
which  makes  the  blow  more  stunning.  I  feel  very  lonely  now  in 
my  secluded  residence  on  the  banks  of  the  Broad — the  music  of 
the  wild  birds  adds  not  to  my  pleasure  now.  Trusting  that  your- 
self and  Mrs.  S may  long  be  spared. — Believe  me  to  remain, 

yours  very  truly,  Henrietta  MacOubrey. 

The  cottage  at  Oulton  was  soon  afterwards  pulled 
down,  but  the  summer-house  where  Borrow  wrote  a 
portion  of  his  Bible  in  Spain  and  his  other  works 
remained  for  some  years.  That  ultimately  an  entirely 
new  structure  took  its  place  may  be  seen  by  comparing 
the  roof  in  Mrs.  MacOubrey 's  drawing  with  the  illus- 
tration of  the  structure  as  it  is  to-day.  Mrs.  Mac- 
Oubrey died  in  1903  at  Yarmouth,  and  the  following 
inscription  may  be  found  on  her  tomb  in  Oulton 
Churchyard : 

Sacred  to  the  memory  of  Henrietta  Mary,  widow  of  William 
MacOubrey,  only  daughter  of  Lieut.  Henry  Clarke,  R.N.,  and 
Mary  Skepper,  his  wife,  and  stepdaughter  of  George  Henry 
Borrow,  Esq.,  the  celebrated  author  of  The  Bible  in  Spain,  The 
Gypsies  of  Spain,  Lavengro,  The  Romany  Rye,  Wild  Wales,  and 
other  works  and  translations.  Henrietta  Mary  MacOubrey  was 
born  at  Oulton  Hall  in  this  Parish,  May  17th,  1818,  and  died 
23rd  December  1903.  '  And  He  shall  give  His  angels  charge  over 
thee,  to  keep  thee  in  all  thy  ways.' — Psalm  xci.  11. 

The  following  extract  from  her  will  is  of  interest  as 
indicating  the  trend  of  a  singularly  kindly  nature.  The 
intimate  friends  of  Mrs.  MacOubrey's  later  years,  whose 
opinion  is  of  more  value  than  that  of  village  gossips, 
speak  of  her  in  terms  of  sincere  affection  : 

I  give  the  following  charitable  legacies,  namely,  to  the  London 
Bible  Society,  in  remembrance  of  the  great  interest  my  dear  father, 
George  Henry  Borrow,  took  in  the  success  of  its  great  work  for 


HENRIETTA  CLARKE  433 

the  benefit  of  mankind,  the  sum  of  one  hundred  pounds.  To  the 
Foreign  Missionary  Society  the  sum  of  one  hundred  pounds.  To 
the  London  Religious  Tract  Society  the  sum  of  one  hundred 
pounds.  To  the  London  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to 
Animals,  the  sum  of  one  hundred  pounds. 


2e 


CHAPTER     XXXVII 

THE  AFTERMATH 
'  We  are  all  Borrovians  now.' — Augustine  Birrell. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  of  only  two  men  of  distinction 
in  English  letters  in  these  later  years  can  it  be  said  that 
they  lived  to  a  good  old  age  and  yet  failed  of  recogni- 
tion for  work  that  is  imperishable.  Many  poets  have 
died  young — Shelley  and  Keats  for  example — to  whom 
this  public  recognition  was  refused  in  their  lifetime.  But 
given  the  happiness  of  reaching  middle  age,  this  recogni- 
tion has  never  failed.  It  came,  for  example,  to  Words- 
worth and  Coleridge  long  after  their  best  work  was  done. 
It  came  with  more  promptness  to  all  the  great  Victorian 
novelists.  This  recognition  did  not  come  in  their  life- 
time to  two  Suffolk  friends,  Edward  FitzGerald  with 
0?)ia?^  Khayyam  and  George  Borrow  with  Lavengro. 
In  the  case  of  FitzGerald  there  was  probably  no  con- 
sciousness that  he  had  produced  a  great  poem.  In  any 
case  his  sunny  Irish  temperament  could  easily  have 
surmounted  disappointment  if  he  had  expected  any- 
thing from  the  world  in  the  way  of  literary  fame. 
Borrow  was  quite  differently  made.  He  was  as  intense 
an  egoist  as  Rousseau,  whose  work  he  had  probably 
never  read,  and  would  not  have  appreciated  if  he  had 
read.  He  longed  for  the  recognition  of  the  multitude 
through  his  books,  and  thoroughly  enjoyed  it  when  it 

434 


THE  AFTERMATH  435 

was  given  to  him  for  a  moment — for  his  Bible  in  Spain. 
Such  appreciation  as  he  received  in  his  Hfetime  was 
given  to  him  for  that  book  and  for  no  other.  There 
were  here  and  there  enthusiasts  for  his  Lavengro  and 
Romany  Rye.  Dr.  Jessopp  has  told  us  that  he  was 
one.  But  it  was  not  until  long  after  his  death  that 
the  word  '  Borrovian  '  ^  came  into  the  language.  Not  a 
single  great  author  among  his  contemporaries  praised 
him  for  his  Lavengro,  the  book  for  which  we  most 
esteem  him  to-day.  His  name  is  not  mentioned  by 
Carlyle  or  Tennyson  or  Ruskin  in  all  their  voluminous 
works.  Among  the  novelists  also  he  is  of  no  account. 
Dickens  and  Thackeray  and  George  Eliot  knew  him 
not.  Charlotte  Bronte  does  indeed  write  of  him  with 
enthusiasm,^  but  she  is  alone  among  the  great  Victorian 
authors  in  this  particular.  Borrow's  Lavengro  received 
no  commendation  from  contemporary  writers  of  the 
first  rank.  He  died  in  his  seventy-eighth  year  an 
obscure  recluse  whose  works  were  all  but  forgotten. 
Since  that  year,  1881,  his  fame  has  been  continually 
growing.  His  greatest  work,  Lavengi^o,  has  been 
reprinted  with   introductions   by  many  able   critics;' 

^  A  word  that  is  very  misleading,  as  no  writer  was  ever  so  little  the 
founder  of  a  school. 

^  Although  this  fact  was  not  known  until  1908  when  1  published  The 
Brontes:  Life  and  Letters.  See  vol.  ii.  p.  24,  where  Charlotte  Bronte  writes  : 
'  In  George  Borrow's  works  1  found  a  wild  fascination,  a  vivid  graphic 
power  of  description,  a  fresh  originality,  an  athletic  simplicity,  which  give 
them  a  stamp  of  their  own.' 

^  Theodore  Watts-Dunton,  Augustine  Birrell,  Francis  Hindes  Groome, 
and  Thomas  Seccombe.  Lionel  Johnson's  essay  on  Borrow  is  the  more 
valuable  in  its  enthusiasm  in  that  it  was  written  by  a  Roman  Catholic. 
Writing  in  the  Outlook  (April  1,  1899)  he  said  : 

'  What  the  four  books  mean  and  are  to  their  lovers  is  upon  this  sort. 
Written  by  a  man  of  intense  personality,  irresistible  in  his  hold  upon  your 
attention,  they  take  you  far  afield  from  weary  cares  and  business  into  the 
enamouring  airs  of  the  open  world,  and  into  days  when  the  countryside  was 


436    GEORGE  BOREOW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 

notable  essayists  have  proclaimed  his  worth.  Of  these 
Mr.  Watts-Dunton  and  Mr.  Augustine  Birrell  have 
been  the  most  assiduous.  The  efforts  of  the  former 
have  already  been  noted.  Mr.  Birrell  has  expressed 
his  devotion  in  more  than  one  essay.  ^  Referring  to  a 
casual  reference  by  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  to  The 
Bible  in  Spain,"  in  which  R.  L.  S.  speaks  well  of  that 
book,  Mr.  Birrell,  not  without  irony,  says  : 

It  is  interesting  to  know  this,  interesting,  that  is,  to  the  great 
Clan  Stevenson,  who  owe  suit  and  service  to  their  liege  lord ; 
but  so  far  as  Borrow  is  concerned,  it  does  not  matter,  to  speak 
frankly,  two  straws.  The  author  of  Lavengro,  The  Romany  Rye, 
The  Bible  iri  Spain,  and  Wild  Wales  is  one  of  those  kings  of  litera- 
ture who  never  need  to  number  their  tribe.  His  personality  will 
always  secure  him  an  attendant  company,  who,  when  he  pipes, 
must  dance. 


uncontaminated  by  the  vulgar  conventions  which  form  the  worst  side  of 
"  civilised "  life  in  cities.  They  give  you  the  sense  of  emancipation,  of 
manumission  into  the  liberty  of  the  winding  road  and  fragrant  forest,  into 
the  freshness  of  an  ancient  country-life,  into  a  milieu  where  men  are  not  copies 
of  each  other.  And  you  fall  in  with  strange  scenes  of  adventure,  great  or 
small,  of  which  a  strange  man  is  the  centre  as  he  is  the  scribe ;  and  from  a 
description  of  a  lonely  glen  you  are  plunged  into  a  dissertation  upon  difficult 
old  tongues,  and  from  dejection  into  laughter,and  from  gypsydom  into  journal- 
ism, and  everything  is  equally  delightful,  and  nothing  that  the  strange 
man  shows  you  can  come  amiss.  And  you  will  hardly  make  up  your  mind 
whether  he  is  most  Don  Quixote,  or  Rousseau,  or  Luther,  or  Defoe  ;  but  you 
will  always  love  these  books  by  a  brave  man  who  travelled  in  far  lands, 
travelled  far  in  his  own  land,  travelled  the  way  of  life  for  close  upon  eighty 
years,  and  died  in  perfect  solitude.  And  this  will  be  the  least  you  can  say, 
though  he  would  not  have  you  say  it — Requiescat  in  pace  Viator.' 

^  In  ResJudicatce,  1892  (a  paper  reprinted  from  The  Reflector,  Jan.  8, 1888), 
in  his  introduction  to  iMvengro  (Macmillan,  1900),  in  an  essay  entitled 
'  The  Office  of  Literature,'  in  the  second  series  of  Obiter  Dicta,  and  in  an 
address  at  Norwich,  on  July  5,  1913,  reprinted  in  full  in  the  Eastern  Daily 
Press  of  July  7,  1913. 

*  There  are  but  three  references  to  Borrow  in  Stevenson's  writings,  all 
of  them  perfunctory.  These  are  in  Memories  arid  Portraits  ('  A  Gossip  on  a 
novel  of  Dumas' '),  in  Familiar  Studies  of  Men  and  Books  {'  Some  aspects  of 
Robert  Burns'),  and  in  The  Ideal  House. 


THE  AFTERMATH  437 

This  is  to  sum  up  the  situation  to  perfection.  You 
cannot  force  people  to  become  readers  of  Borrow  by- 
argument,  by  criticism,  or  by  the  force  of  authority. 
You  reach  the  stage  of  admiration  and  even  love  by 
effects  which  rise  remote  from  all  questions  of  style  or 
taste.  To  say,  as  does  a  recent  critic,  that  'there  is 
something  in  Borrow  after  all ;  not  so  much  as  most 
people  suppose,  but  still  a  great  deal,'^  is  to  miss  the 
compelling  power  of  his  best  books  as  they  strike  those 
with  whom  they  are  among  the  finest  things  in  litera- 
ture.^ In  attempting  to  interest  new  readers  in  the  man 
— and  this  book  is  not  for  the  sect  called  Borrovians, 
to  whom  I  recommend  the  earlier  biographies,  but  for 
a  wider  public  which  knows  not  Borrow — I  hope  I 
shall  succeed  in  sending  many  to  those  incomparable 
works,  which  have  given  me  so  many  pleasant  hours. 

1  The  Spectator,  July  12,  1913. 

'  On  July  6,  1913,  Dr.  H.  C.  Beecbiug,  Dean  of  Norwich,  preached  a 
sermon  on  Borrow  in  Norwich  Cathedral,  which  in  its  graceful  literary 
entliusiasm  may  be  counted  the  culminating  point  of  recognition  of  Borrow 
so  far,  when  the  place  is  considered.  The  sermon  has  been  published  by 
Jarrold  and  Sons  of  Norwich. 


INDEX 


AiKiN,  Dr.,  quarrels  with  Phillips, 
90. 

Lucy,     90 ;     on     Mrs.     John 

Taylor,  64 ;  on  William  Taylor, 
66. 

Ainsworth,  Harrison,  Luvengro  criti- 
cised by,  278. 

Ancient  Poetry  and  Romances  of  Spain, 
by  Bo  wring,  140. 

Andre,  Major,  trial  of,  included  in 
Sorrow's  volumes,  113. 

Annah-  of  the  Harford  Family,  re- 
ference to  Borrow  in,  245. 

Apologia  pro  Vita  Sua,  by  J.  H.  New- 
man, 345. 

Arden,  F.,  111. 

Athenceum,  The,  founding  of,  90 ; 
Hasfeld's  letter  on  Russian  litera- 
ture and  Borrow  in,  165-166 ; 
friendly  review  of  The  Zincali  in, 
227  ;  publishes  letters  from  Bor- 
row, 240 ;  severely  criticises 
Lavengro,  278,  347 — and  Romany 
Rye,  847;  reminiscences  of  Bor- 
row contributed  to,  315-316  ;  con- 
temptuous notice  of  Romano  Lavo- 
Lil  in,  361  ;  obituary  of  Borrow 
in,  391. 

Austin,  John,  64. 

Sarah,  55. 

Autobiographical  Recollections  of  Sir 
John  Bowring,  139. 

Autobiography  of  Harriet  Martineau, 
quoted,  65. 

B 

Baldrey,  S.  H.,  reminiscences  of  the 
Borrows  published  by,  416-420. 

Barbauld,  Mrs.,  67,  90. 

Barclay,  Mrs.  Florence,  addresses 
Bible  Society  meeting,  183-184. 


Bards  of  the  Gael  and  Gaul,  by  Dr. 
Sigerson ;  editions  published  of, 
408. 

Baretti,  Joseph,  witnesses  at  trial  of, 
114. 

Barron,  James,  on  Borrow's  itiner 
ary  in  Scotland,  330,  331. 

Bathurst,  Bishop,  57,  110. 

Beeching,  Dr.,  184;  graceful  re- 
cognition of  Borrow  in  sermon  of, 
437. 

Belcher,  pugilist,  130,  131. 

Bell,  Catherine,  55. 

Benjamin  Robert  Haydon;  Correspond- 
ence and  Table  Talk,  by  F.  W. 
Haydon,  25. 

Benson,  A.  C,  verses  on  '  My  Poet,' 
312. 

Best,  Mr.  Justice,  his  '  Great  Mind, 
123. 

Bible  in  Spain,  The,  180,  201,  202, 
289 ;  much  sheer  invention  in, 
136,  313;  quoted,  182-183,  210, 
238-239  ;  episode  of  the  blind  girl, 
192  ;  brings  fame  to  Borrow,  227, 
243-244;  the  title  of,  237-238; 
criticisms  of  Mr.  Murray's  reader 
on  copy  of- — number  of  copies  sold 
^referred  to  in  House  of  Com- 
mons, 243 ;  reviews  of,  243,  250, 
278;  how  written,  279;  Glad- 
stone's admiration  of,  313,  397  ; 
Cowell's  opinion  of,  356. 

Birrell,  Augustine,  237,  238  ;  story 
told  by,  128 ;  introduction  to 
Lavengro  by,  435,  436. 

Blackwood's  Magazine,  condemns 
Lavengro,  278. 

Borrow,  Ann,  mother  of  Borrow 
2,  6,  10, 139,  219  ;  life  in  Norwich 
of,  12-17,  71 ;  correspondence  of, 
17,  33-35,  188,  193-196,  220; 
death — inscription  on  tomb  of,  314. 

439 


440    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 


Borrow,  Elizabeth,  293. 

George    Henry,    biographical 

drafts  and  family  history  of,  1-7; 
wandering    childhood    of,    36-63 ; 
schooldays    and    schoolfellows     at 
Norwich  of,  71-78  ;    struggles  and 
failure  in  London,  96-102  ;   Celtic 
ancestry   of,    364 ;    characteristics 
of,  14,  16,  161,  285,  312-313,  316- 
317,  360,  361,  393,  406-412,  434  ; 
agent  for  Bible  Society,  169,  191; 
facsimile    of    an   account    of    the 
Society   with,    190 ;    work  for  the 
Society    in — Portugal,    184-186 — 
Russia,  162-178— Spain,  179-214; 
imprisonments   of,   134,   191,  198, 
222 ;    correspondence    of,    with — 
Bowring,    142-151 — Brackenbury, 
198-200— Ford,  250-259— Haydon, 
26 — Jerningham,    198 — Henrietta 
MacOubrey,     421-428 — publishers 
of  Faustus,  108 — Secretary  at  War, 
28-32— his  wife,  223-225,  261-268, 
272-273,      319,     325-335,     340; 
Darwin    asks     information    from, 
317-318  ;      handwriting    of,    275  ; 
fails  to  become  a  magistrate,  214, 
313-314 ;    feeling    of,    as    regards 
people  and   language   of  Ireland, 
50,296-297;  friends  of  later  years, 
389-400 ;  life  of,  in  London,  379- 
388 — in   Oulton   Broad   and    Yar- 
mouth,  304-320 ;    attainments  of, 
as  a  linguist,  3,  4,    51,   68,    138- 
139,  412 ;     advertisement   of,     as 
a  Professor  of  Languages,  409  ;'<his 
ignorance  of  philology,  357;  liter- 
ary tastes  of,  2,  11,  38,  135,  344- 
346,  390;  literary  methods  of,  240- 
243,  285  ;  attitude  towards  literary 
men  of,  317,  347,  393  ;    marriage 
of,  3,  198-199,  220-223,  225  ;    per- 
sonal appearance  of,  226,  260-261, 
293,  309-311,  316-317,    339,  385, 
397-398  ;   physical  vigour  of,  383, 
419-420;    political   sympathies  of, 
181;     existing    portraits   of,    382  ; 
pugilistic  tastes  of,  126-132  ;   on  a 
phase   of    folklore,    235-236;     on 
theory  of  Jewish  origin  of  the  Gyp- 
sies, 308-309  ;  on  Spiritualism,  386; 
translations   by,  82,  133-137,  187, 
247,  404-405  ;  travels  in — Austria- 
Hungary,      261-268 — Greece    and 
Italy,  272-273— Ireland,  339-340— 


Portugal,  184-186— Russia,  162- 
178— Scotland,  321 -330— Spain, 
179-214— Wales,  364-366,  374- 
378  ;  unfounded  reports  as  to 
neglect  of,  when  dying,  414-415  ; 
unrecognised  genius  and  growing 
fame  of,  312-313,  435-436  ;  Yar- 
mouth rescue  episode,  290-293. 

Borrow,  Henry,  293. 

John,   grandfather    of    George 

Henry,  3-5. 

John    Thomas,    4,    6,   49,    60; 


Captain  Borrow's  love  of,  8,  19 ; 
described  in  Lavengro,  18-19 ;  pic- 
tures by,  21  ;  career  and  death  of, 
19-36. 

Mary,  218,  219,  222,  277,  278 ; 


correspondence  with — Ann  Bor- 
row, 366-366— G.  H.  Borrow,  167- 
158,  246,  261-274,  294,  374-876, 
379-382— Clarke,  216-217— Hake, 
394-396 ;  epitaph  written  for,  by 
Borrow,  215 ;  family  history  of, 
214-217 ;  housekeeping  genius  of, 
415;  marriage  of,  157-158,  226; 
unpublished  works  of,  295  ;  death 
of,  383,  387. 

Captain  Thomas,  19,  20,  36,  49, 


87,  293  ;  descent  of,  2-5  ;  military 
career  of,  6-7 ;  references  to,  in 
Lavengro,  8-11  ;  prejudiced  against 
the  Irish,  50,  52 ;  pensioned  off, 
70 ;  his  fight  with  Big  Ben  Brain, 
126,  129. 

William,  293. 


Bowring,  Sir  John,  collaboration  with 
BoiTow,  136 ;  correspondence  of, 
with  Borrow,  142-152,  184-186, 
235,  401-402;  described  by  Bor- 
row, 141-142 ;  Borrow's  misunder- 
standing with,  290  ;  Borrow's  rela- 
tions with,  138-162. 

Boyd,  Robert,  249. 

Brace,  Charles  L.,  264. 

Brackenbury,  Mr.,  letter  from,  to 
Borrow,  198-200. 

Brain,  Big  Ben,  supposed  fight  be- 
tween Captain  Borrow  and,  8,  9, 
10;  career  of,  129,  130. 

Brandram,  Rev.  Mr.,  159;  corres- 
pondence of,  with  Borrow,  171-173, 
180-182,  189-192,  221-222;  letter 
from,  to  Mrs.  Borrow,  188  ;  repi'O- 
duction  of  portion  of  Borrow's 
letter  to,  187. 


INDEX 


441 


Brightwellj  Cecilia,  letter  from,  to 
Mary  Borrow,  1(5. 

British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society, 
aided  by  the  Gurneys,  62  ;  Bor- 
row's  connection  with,  3, 133,  163- 
196  ;  gi'owth  and  procedure  of, 
155-157  ;  sanctioned  in  Russia  by 
the  Czar,  156-157  ;  number  of  bibles 
issued  in  Spain  for  three  years  up 
to  1913,  184 ;  work  of,  in  Spain, 
182-200  ;  facsimile  of  an  account 
with  Borrow  of  the,  190 ;  breezy 
controversy  between  Borrow  and 
the,  191. 

Brodripp,  A.  A.,  90. 

Bronte,  Charlotte,  writes  of  Borrow 
with  enthusiasm,  435. 

Brontes,  The,  by  Clement  Shorter, 
quoted,  485. 

Brooke,  Rajah,  17,  71,  72. 

Brown,  Rev.  Arthur,  40,  41. 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  54. 

Browning,  Robert,  114. 

Buchini,  Antonio,  Borrow's  attendant 
in  Spain,  189. 

Bunsens,  the  invitation  given  to 
Borrow  by,  245. 

Bunyan,  what  Borrow  owed  to,  346. 

Burcham,  Thomas,  81  ;  letter  from, 
to  The  Britannia  on  Lavengro,  17. 

Burke,  Edmund,  114. 

Bury  Post,  The,  account  in,  of  life- 
saving  by  Borrow  at  Yarmouth, 
290. 

Buxton,  Sir  T.  F.,  56. 

Lady,  56,  58. 


Cagliostro,  trial  of,  included  in  Bor- 
row's volumes,  113. 

Caius,  John,  71. 

Campbell,  Thomas,  82,  111. 

Cannon,  Sergeant,  5. 

Canton,  William,  166. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  154,  163  ;  point  of 
similitude  between  Borrow  and, 
377  ;  on  Edward  FitzGerald,  351  ; 
prejudiced  against  Scott,  67,  108. 

Celebrated  Trials,  Borrow's  first  piece 
of  hack-work,  97  ;  payment  made 
to  Borrow  for,  113;  distinguishing 
feature  of,  114;  dramatic  episodes 
in,  114-116. 


Celtic  Bards,  unpublished  work  of 
Borrow,  294,  404 ;  merits  of, 
408. 

Chiefs  and  Kings,  unpublished  work 
of  Borrow,  404  ;  merits  of,  408. 

Christ's  Entry  into  Jerusalem,  picture 
by  Haydon,  24. 

Clarendon,  Earl  of,  289 ;  befriends 
Borrow  in  Spain,  140,  186  ;  career 
of,  and  services  to  Borrow,  210- 
214;  facsimile  of  letter  to  Borrow 
from,  211. 

Clarke,  Lieutenant  Henry,  216,  219. 

Dr.  Samuel,  71. 

Cobbe,  Frances  Power,  344  ;  her 
opinion  of  Borrow,  154  ;  her  story 
of  Borrow  and  James  Martineau, 
77  ;  unkindly  glimpses  of  Borrow 
given  by — her  character  and  works, 
383-385  ;  Borrow's  rudeness  to, 
388. 

Cobham,  Lord,  trial  of,  included  in 
Borrow's  volumes,  113. 

Cockburn,  Lord,  on  David  Haggart, 
46. 

Coke,  Lord  Chief  Justice,  71. 

Collins,  Mortimer,  his  appreciation 
of  Wild  Wales,  872-373  ;  works  of, 
373. 

Collinson,  Robert,  388. 

Combe,  George,  phrenological  obser- 
vations of,  regarding  David  Hag- 
gart, 46. 

Cooke,  Robert,  361. 

Cornhill  Magazine,  The,  reviews  Wild 
Wales  unfavourably,  367. 

'  Corporation  Feast,  The,'  plate  of, 
borrowed  for  Life  and  Death  of 
Faustus,  103. 

Co  well.  Professor  E.  C,  friendship 
of,  with  FitzGerald,  354-355  ;  de- 
scribes interview  with  Borrow, 
355-357. 

Cowper,  poet,  Borrow's  devotion  to, 
2,  38. 

Cozens-Hardy,  A.,  309. 

Crabbe,  Mrs.,  419. 

George,  FitzGerald's  letter  to, 

360. 

Cribb,  pugilist,  130,  131. 

Croft,  Sir  Herbert,  115. 

Crome,  John,  21,  22,  56,  70. 

Cunningham,  Mrs.,  bQ. 

Allan,    writes    introduction    in 

verse  to  Romantic  Ballads  ;  corres- 


442    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 


pondence  with  Borrow,  107 ;  en- 
courages Borrow,  108-109. 

Cunuingham,  Rev.  Francis,  befriends 
Borrow  with  the  Bible  Society,  56, 
62,  156, 158  ;  his  praise  of  Borrow, 
179,  218. 

Rev.  John  W.,  156,  217. 


D 

Dairyman's  Daughter,  The,  extra- 
ordinary vogue  of,  97 ;  Borrow's 
failure  to  appreciate,  155. 

Dalrymple,  Arthur,  on  schooldays  of 
Borrow,  73-74  ;  on  Borrow  and  his 
wife,  225  ;  ridicules  story  of  life- 
saving  by  Borrow  at  Yarmouth, 
291. 

John,  joins  Borrow  in  a  school- 
boy escapade,  73,  75. 

Darwin,  Charles,  facsimile  of  letter 
from,  asking  for  information,  re- 
garding the  dogs  of  Spain,  from 
Borrow,  317-318. 

Death  of  Balder,  The,  translation  by 
Borrow,  142,  295  ;  issued  by  Jar- 
rold,  404. 

Deceived  Merman,  The,  versions  by 
Borrow  and  Matthew  Arnold  com- 
pared, 109-110. 

Defoe,  Daniel,  Borrow's  master  in 
literature,  40,  135,  346. 

Denuiss,  Rev.  E.  P.,  acrid  corre- 
spondence between  Borrow  and, 
313. 

D'Eterville,  Thomas,  Borrow's 
teacher,  72-73. 

Diaz,  Maria,  Borrow's  tribute  to,  201. 

Dickens,  Charles,  345. 

Dictionary  of  National  Biography, 
article  on  Borrow  in,  392. 

Donne,  W.  B.,  letters  to  Borrow, 
347,  361-3G2  ;  awards  high  praise 
to  Romany  Rye  and  Lavengro,  347- 
348. 

Drake,  William,  description  of 
Borrow  by,  80. 

DuiF-Gordon,  Lady  A.,  64. 

Dumpling  Green,  birthplace  of  Bor- 
row, 1,  2,  37. 

Dutt,  W.  A.,  on  Borrow  and  James 
Martineau,  75-76  ;  on  state  of 
Oulton  house  after  Borrow's  death, 
414. 


E 


East  Dereham,  described  in  Laven- 
gro, 1,  38. 

Eastern  Daily  Press,  The,  '  George 
Borrow  Reminiscences'  published 
in,  416-420 ;  Miss  Harvey's  letter 
on  Borrow  in,  309-311. 

Eastlake,  Ladv,  her  description  of 
Borrow,  260-261. 

Edinburgh,  childhood  of  Borrow  in, 
45-49. 

Edinburgh  Review,  reviews  Borrow's 
works,  227. 

Egan,  Pierce,  121. 

Elwin,  Rev.  Whitwell,  his  esti- 
mate of  Lavengro,  281,  283;  his 
interview  with,  and  impressions 
of.  Borrow,  284-285;  letters  to 
Borrow  from,  286-287  ;  reviews 
Romany  Rye  in  Quarterly  Review, 
347  ;  writes  obituary  of  Borrow  in 
Athenccum,  391. 

Enghien,  Due  d',  trial  of,  included 
in  Bori'ow's  volumes,  113. 

English  Gypsies,  The,  by  Charles  G. 
Leland,"  233. 

Essays  Critical  and  Historical,  by  J. 
H.  Newman,  quoted,  345. 

Examiner,  The,  at  one  time  only 
paper  read  by  Borrow,  402. 

Excursions  along  the  Shores  of  the 
Mediterranean,  attractive  glimpse 
of  Borrow  in,  202-207. 


Fauntleroy,  Henry,  trial  of,  in- 
cluded in  Borrow's  volumes,  114- 
115. 

Faustus,  translated  by  Borrow,  101- 
106,  112,  139,  140;  burned  by 
libraries  of  Norwich,  105  ;  criti- 
cisms on,  106. 

Fell,  Ralph,  compiles  memoirs  of 
Phillips,  88. 

Fenn,  Lady,  commemorated  by 
Cowper,  and  in  Lavengro — books 
for  children  by,  38. 

Sir    John,    author    of  Paston 

Letters,  38. 

Fielding,  what  Borrow  owed  to,  346. 

Fig,  James,  128. 

Findlater,  Jane  H.,  on  the  title  of 
The  Bible  in  Spain,  238. 


INDEX 


443 


FitzGerald,  Edward,  parallel  between 
Borrow  and,  —  works  of,  360- 
SSl  ;  character  and  gifts  of,  361  ; 
marriage  of,  352  ;  letters  to  Bor- 
row, 351-355,  359-362  ;  criticises 
Sorrow's  expressions,  3f50. 

Footprints  of  George  Borrow,  by  A. 
G.  Jayne,  202. 

Ford,  Richard,  227,  289  ;  family 
history  and  fortune  of,  248-249 ; 
anti-democratic  outlook  of,  249 ; 
his  tribute  to  Borrow  —  reviews 
The  Bible  in  Spain,  250 ;  corre- 
spondence with  the  Borrows,  133, 
250-259 ;  odd  sentence  referring 
to  Borrow,  in  a  letter  of,  254 ; 
advice  given  to  Borrow  by,  148, 
270 ;  his  ideas  about  Lavengro, 
277  ;  on  The  Zinculi,  228,  229  ;  his 
work,  133,  256,  257,  268. 

Sir  Richard,  creator  of  mounted 

police  force  of  London,  248. 

Fox,  Caroline,  159. 

Francis,  John  Collins,  400. 

Frazer's  Magazine,  Lavengro  con- 
demned by,  278. 

French  Prisoners  of  Norman  Cross, 
The,  by  Rev.  Arthur  Brown,  40. 

Fry,  Elizabeth,  65-66 ;  connection 
of,  with  Bible  Society,  155  ;  the 
courtship  of,  56-57. 


G 

Garrick,  David,  114. 

'  George  Borrow  Reminiscences,'  by 

S.  H.  Baldrey,  quoted,  416-420. 
George  Burrow's  Letters    to   the  Bitile 

Society,  162-163. 
George    Borrow ;    The   Man   and   his 

Work,  account  of  Borrow's  Cornish 

journey  in,  294. 
Gibson,  Robin,  47. 
Gifford,  William,  99;  letter  from,  to 

Borrow,  criticising  a  friend's  play, 

410-412. 
Gill,    Rev.    W.,    letter  to    Borrow 

from,  301. 
Gypsies,  language  of,  studied  by  Bor- 
row, 3,  4  ;  Borrow's  description  of 

Hungarian,  265. 
Gladstone,  W.  E.,his  admiration  of 

The  Bible  in  Spain,  818. 
Glen,  >yilliam,   Borrow's  friendship 

with,  162-163. 


Gould,  J.  C,  85. 

Graydon,  Lieutenant,  a  rival  of  Bor- 
row in  Spain,  189  ;  Borrow's  at- 
tack upon,  191. 

Groome,  Archdeacon,  his  memories 
of  Borrow's  schooldays,  80. 

F.     H.,     gipsy     scholar,     43; 

writes  introduction  to  Lavengro, 
435 ;  reviews  Romano  Lavo-Lil, 
232,  233-234  ;  works  of,  234. 

Grundtvig,  Mr.,  Borrow's  transla- 
tions for,  147,  149. 

Gully,  John,  career  of,  131. 

Gunn,  Rev.  J.,  414. 

Gurdons,  the,  subscribe  to  Borrow's 
'  Romantic  Ballads,'  110. 

Gurney,  Miss  Anna,  letter  from,  to 
Mrs.  Borrow,  240-241  ;  Borrow 
cross-examined  in  Arabic  by,  816. 

Daniel,  58. 

John,  56-56. 

Joseph     John,    connection     of 

with  great  bank,  56-58  ;  and  with 
Bible  Society,  155  ;  his  praise  of 
Borrow,  179. 

Gurneys,  the,  at  Norwich,  55-62 ; 
subscribe  to  Borrow's  '  Romantic 
Ballads,'  110. 

Gurneys  of  EarUuun,  The,  by  A.  J.  C. 
Hare,  quoted,  56. 

Gypsies  of  Spain,  The.  See  Zincali, 
'The. 

H 

Hackman,  Parson,  trial  of,  in  Bor- 
row's volumes,  11.5. 

Haggart,  David,  20  ;  story  of,  45-48  ; 
trial  and  execution  of — verses 
written  by,  49. 

Hake,  Egmont,  article  of,  in  Diction- 
ary of  National  Biography,  on 
Borrow,  892 ;  his  reminiscence  of 
Borrow,  397. 

Dr.  T.  G.,  74,  291  ;  on  Lavengro, 

278,  389,  390-391 ;  his  intimacy  with 
Borrow,  389-397  ;  relations  of,  with 
the  Rossetti  family,  389  ;  asperities 
of,  when  speaking  of  Borrow,  391, 
892,  393  ;  memoir  of,  in  the  Athen- 
ceum,  391. 

Hamilton,  Duke  of,  129. 

Handbook  for  Travellers  in  Spain, 
by  Richard  Ford,  133 ;  Borrow's 
blundering  review  of,  255,  257  ,* 
Maxwell's  praise  of,  258. 


444    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 


Hare,  Augustus  J.  C,  56. 
Hares,  the,  110. 
Harper,  Lieutenant,  32. 
Harvey,  Miss  Elizabeth,  her  impres- 
sions of  Borrow,  309-312  ;  letters  to 
Mrs.  MacOubrey  from,  429-431. 
Harveys,  the,  110. 

Hasfeld,  John  P.,  244,  289  ;  Sorrow's 
correspondence  with,  163-168;  high 
praise  of  Targum  by,  408. 
Hawkes,  Robert,  25,  111;  painting 

of,  23-24. 
Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  suggestion  of, 
as  to  gypsy  descent  of  Borrow,  6, 
12,  13. 

Haydon,  Benjamin,  111  ;  career  of, 
24-27 ;  correspondence  of,  with 
Borrow,  25,  135-136. 

Hayim  Ben  Attar,  Moorish  servant 
of  Borrow,  197,  222  ;  Borrow's  pre- 
cautions in  repatriating,  306-309. 

Hazlitt,  William,  on  prize-fighting, 
126-127. 

Heenan,  pugilist,  128. 

Heme,  Sanspirella,  second  wife  of 
Ambrose  Smith,  42-43. 

Hester,  George  P. ,  writes  to  Borrow 
on  possible  connection  between 
Sclaves  and  Saxons,  348-349. 

Highland  Society,  the,  Borrow's  pro- 
posal to,  136-137. 

Hill,  Mary,  48. 

Historic  Survey  of  German  Poetry,  by 
William  Taylor,  68. 

History  of  the  British  and  Foreign 
Bible  Society,  by  William  Canton, 
156. 

Hooper,  James,  letter  from  Professor 
Cowell  to,  355-357. 

Howell,  State  Trials  of,  112,  113. 

Howitt,  Mary,  her  appreciation  of 
Wild  Wales,  369. 

Hudson,  pugilist,  130. 

Hungari/  in  1851,  glimpse  of  Borrow 
in,  264. 

Hunt,  Joseph,  trial  and  execution  of, 
121-123. 

Hyde,  Dr.  Douglas,  Irish  scholar, 
51  ;  success  of  Love  Songs  of  Con- 
naught  by,  408. 

I 

Ida  of  Athens,  judgment  of  Phillips 

on',  93. 
Illustrated    London    News,    The,   94; 


Borrow's  contribution  to,  on  Runic 
stone,  801-303. 

Image,  W.  E. ,  last  survivor  of  Bor- 
row's schoolfellows,  77. 

In  Gipsy  Tents,  by  F.  H.  Groome, 
43. 

Ireland,  Borrow's  early  years  in,  49- 
53 ;  his  feelings  as  regards  people 
and  language  of,  296-297. 

Iris,  The,  editing  of,  67. 


Jackson,  John,  pugilist,  127. 

Jarie  Eyre,  cruelly  reviewed  by  Lady 
Eastiake,  260. 

Jay,  Elizabeth,  on  happy  married  life 
of  the  Borrows,  225. 

George,    Borrow   on   yacht    of, 

419-420. 

Jenkins,  Mr.  Herbert,  136,  148,  378, 
387,  415. 

Jerningham,  Sir  George,  letter  from, 
to  Boi-row,  198 ;  Borrow's  com- 
plaints to,  212. 

Jessopp,  Dr.,  on  Borrow  as  a  pupil  at 
the  Grammar  School,  72 ;  his 
admiration  of  Borrow,  314-315. 

Joan  of  Arc,  trial  of,  included  in 
Borrow's  volumes,  113. 

Johnson,  publisher,  kis  offers  for 
The  Wild  Irish  Girl,  92. 

Catharine  B.,  361. 

Dr.    Samuel,   114 ;    on   Ireland 

and  Irish  Literature,  51  ;  his  kind- 
ness for  pugilists,  127. 

Tom,    his     fight    with     Brain, 


129. 

Lionel,  his    essay  'on    Borrow, 

435. 

Jones,  Ellen,  on  Borrow's  pronuncia- 
tion of  Welsh,  378. 

Journal  of  the  Gypsy  Lore  Society,  41, 
44. 

Jowett,  Rev.  Joseph,  Secretary  of  the 
Bible  Society,  62  ;  correspondence 
of,  with  Borrow,  162,  170-171, 
176. 

Judgment  of  Solomon,  painting  by 
J»hn  Borrow,  21. 

K 

Kampe  Viser,  translation  by  Borrow, 

143-144. 
Keate,  Dr.,  174. 


INDEX 


445 


Kerrisou,  Alladay,  84 ;   invites  Johu 
Borrow  to  join  him  in  Mexico,  27. 

Roger,  84, 101  ;  Borrow's  corre- 
spondence with,  85,  153. 
Thomas,  84. 


Kett,  Robert,  54. 

Kings  and  Earls,  unpublished  work 

of  Borrow,  404  ;  merits  of,  408. 
Kingsley,  Charles,  345. 
King,  Thomas,  owner  of  the  Borrow 

house  in  Willow  Lane — descent  of, 

from  Archbishop  Parker,  16-17. 
junior,  career  of — marries 

sister   of  J.   S.   Mill, — Burcham's 

allusion  to,  16-17. 
Tom,    conqueror    of    Heenan, 

128. 
Klinger,  F.  M.  von,  responsible  for 

Borrow's  first  book — works  of,  104. 
Knapp,  Dr.,  Life  of  Borrow  by,  5  and 

passim  ;  purchases  half  the  Borrow 

papers,  241. 


Lambert,  Daniel,  gaoler  of  Phillips, 
89. 

Lamplighter,  racehorse,  Borrow's 
desire  to  see,  316. 

Lang,  Andrew,  his  onslaught  on 
Borrow,  391. 

Laurie,  Sir  Robert,  17. 

Lavengro,  appreciations  of,  228-230, 
278,  389,  391  ;  autobiographical 
nature  of,  1,  4,  6,  8,  10,  11,  52, 
58-(;2,  81,  83-84,  96-97,  279,  285- 
286,  379  ;  copies  of,  sold,  279,  287- 
288 ;  criticisms  and  reviews  of, 
278-279,  281,  347  ;  Donne  on  some 
reviewers  of,  361-362 ;  facsimile 
of  first  manuscript  page  of,  282  ; 
greatness  of,  unrecognised  in  Bor- 
row's lifetime,  312-313  ;  original 
manuscript  title-page  of,  280  ;  pre- 
paration of  manuscript  of,  276-277; 
397 ;  Thurtell  referred  to  in,  116- 
117. 

Leicester  Herald  started  by  Phillips, 
88-89. 

Leland,  Charles  Godfrey,  corre- 
spondence of,  with  Borrow,  230- 
232  ;  his  books — tribute  to  Borrow, 
233. 

Letters  from  Egypt,  by  Lady  A.  Duff- 
Gordon,  64. 


Letters  from  George  Borrow  to  the  Bible 
Society,  159,  162,  163,  169;  valu- 
able information  in,  180-181  ;  in- 
teresting facts  revealed  in,  241-242 ; 
quoted,  174,  175. 

Letters  of  Richard  Ford,  248,  249 ;  Bor- 
row's mistake  in  reviewing,  255. 

Life  arid  Adventures  of  Joseph  Sell, 
Borrow's  story  of  the  writing  of, 
102. 

Life  of  Borrow,  by  Dr.  Knapp,  5,  6, 
8,  and  passim ;  glimpse  of  Ann 
Perfrement's  girlhood  in,  13  ; 
gruesome  picture  of  circumstances 
of  Borrow's  death — strongly  de- 
nounced by  Henrietta  MacOubrey, 
414. 

Life  of  B.  R.  Haydon,  by  Tom  Taylor, 
24,  25. 

Life  of  David  Haggart,  by  himself, 
■46." 

Life  of  Frances  Power  Cobbe  as  fold  by 
Herself,  glimpses  of  Borrow  in, 
383-384. 

Life  of  George  Borrow,  by  Herbert 
Jenkins,  387,  and  passim  ;  valuable 
information  in,  180-181  ;  quoted, 
261,  378. 

Life  of  Howard,  90. 

Life  of  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  quoted, 
64-65. 

Lights  on  Borrow,  by  Rev.  A.  Jes- 
sopp,  D.D.,  quoted,  72. 

Lipoftsof,  worker  for  Bible  Society, 
169,  173. 

Literary  Gazette,  The,  reviews  of  Bor- 
row's works  in,  106,  227. 

Lloyd,  Miss  M.C.,  383. 

Lofft,  Capell,  90. 

Lopez,  Eduardo,  202. 

Juan,  Borrow's  tribute  to,  201- 

202. 

Love  Songs  of  Connaught,  by  Dr. 
Hyde,  success  of,  408. 

M 

Macaulay,  Zachary,  connection  of, 

with  Bible  Society,  155. 
MacColl,  Mr.,  392.' 
Mace,  Jem,  128. 
Mackay,  Nniliam,  his  impressions  of 

Borrow  related  by,  316-317. 
MacOubrey,    Dr.,    335,    414,    415  ; 

status    and    accomplishments     of, 


446    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 


420 ;  pamphlets  issued  by,  421 ; 
illness  and  death  of,  431-432, 

MacOubrey,  Henrietta,  155, 195,216, 
363,  and  passim ;  on  Borrow,  81  ; 
Borrow's  tribute  to,  in  Wild  Wales — 
her  devotion  to  Borrow,  413 ;  un- 
founded stories  of  her  neglect  of 
Borrow,  414-416;  correspondence 
of,  421-431 ;  death  of — inscription 
on  tomb  of,  432 ;  charitable  be- 
quests of,  431-432. 

Man,  Isle  of,  Borrow's  expedition  to, 
296-303  ;  his  investigations  into  the 
Manx  language,  298-299  ;  the 
Runic  stone,  800-303. 

Marie  Antoinette,  trial  of,  included 
in  Borrow's  volumes,  113. 

Martelli,  C.  F.,  his  memories  of 
Borrow,  86. 

Martineau,  David,  63. 

Dr.  James,  on  supposed  gypsy 

descent  of  Borrow,  12-13  ;  impres- 
sions of,  as  schoolfellow  of  Bor- 
row, 62,  71,  74-77. 

Gaston,  63. 

Harriet,  63  ;  on  Borrow's  con- 


nection   with   the    Bible    Society, 

153-154. 
Matthew,  Father,  66. 
Mavor,  Dr.,  school-books  issued  by, 

94. 
Maxwell,  Sir   W.  S.,  praises  Ford's 

book,    258 ;     criticises     Lavengi-o, 

278. 
Meadow's,  Margaret,  63. 

Sarah,  63. 

Memoir  of  the  Life  and    Writings  of 

William  Taylor  of  Norwich,  A,  by 

J.  W.  Robbards,  66. 
Memoirs  of  Fifty   Years,    by   T.    G. 

Hake,  166,  390. 
Memoirs  of  John  Venning,  160. 
Memoirs  of   Lady   Morgan,   quoted, 

62. 
Memoirs  of  the  Public  and  Private  Life 

of  Sir  Richard  Phillips,  88. 
Memoirs    of    Vidocq,    translated     by 

Borrow,  136. 
Mendizabal,  Borrow's  interview  with, 

186,  214. 
Men  of  the  Time,  biographical  drafts 

drawn  up  by  Borrow  for,  3-5. 
Meyer,  Dr.  Kuno,  Irisli  scholar,  51  ; 

work  of,  in  Irish  literature,  408. 
Mezzofanti,  209. 


Miles,  H.  D.,  his  defence  of  prize- 
fighting, 127. 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  Thomas  King 
marries  sister  of,  16-17. 

Mitford,  Miss,  25. 

Moira,  Lord,  89. 

Mol,  Benedict,  202,  239. 

Montague,  Basil,  his  reference  to 
Mrs.  John  Taylor,  64-65. 

Monthly  Magazine,  The,  67,  69,  90, 
113  ;  Borrow's  work  on,  97. 

Moore,  Thomas,  91. 

More  Leaves  from  the  Journal  of  a 
Life  in  the  Highlands,  visit  to  gypsy 
encampment  described  in,  43. 

Morgan,  Lady,  works  of,  published 
by  Phillips,  91-93. 

Morrin,  killed  by  David  Haggart, 
48. 

Morris,  Lewis,  Welsh  bard,  371. 

Sir   Lewis,    letter   to    Borrow, 

371-372. 

Mousehold  Heath,  historical  and 
artistic  associations  of,  42,  54. 

Mousha,  introduces  Borrow  to 
Taylor,  83 ;  figures  in  Lavengro, 
83-84. 

Murray,  John,  publishes  The  Zincali, 
226-227  ;  Borrow's  relations  with, 
342-343 ;  correspondence  of  Bor- 
row with,  313,  342-343. 

Hon.  R.  D.,  200. 

Murtagh,  Irish  friend  of  Borrow — 
figures  in  Lavengro,  49-52. 

Museum,  The,  89. 

N 
Nantks,  Edict  of,  Borrow's  ancestors 

driven  from  France  by  Revocation 

of,  4,  12,  63. 
Napier,  Admiral  Sir  C,  202. 
Col.       E.,      138;      interesting 

account  of  Borrow  by,  202-207. 
Nelson,  Lord,  a    pupil   of  Norwich 

Grammar  School,  71. 
Newgate  Caloidar,  edited  by  Borrow, 

5,  112,  113. 
Newgate  Lives  and  Trials,    Borrow's 

work  on,  100. 
Newman,    Cardinal,    influenced    to- 
wards    Roman      Catholicism     by 

Scott,  345. 
New  Monthly  Maga~ine,  The,  12(5. 
New  Testament,   edited   by   Borrow 

in  Manchu  and  Spanish,  3. 


INDEX 


447 


Ney,  Marshal,  trial  of,  included  in 
Borrow's  volumes,  113. 

Nicholas,  Thomas,  293. 

Norfolk,  Duke  of,  89. 

Noi'mau  Cross,  French  prisoners  at, 
7,  45  ;  Borrow's  memories  of,  40- 
45. 

Northern  Skalds,  unpublished  work 
of  Borrow,  404  ;  merits  of,  408. 

Norwich,  54,  86 ;  Borrow's  descrip- 
tion of,  82-83 ;  satirised  by  Bor- 
row, 103. 

Novice,  The,  favourite  book  of 
William  Pitt,  91-92. 


O 

0'Connp:ll,  Daniel,  Borrow's  desire 

to  see,  316. 
Oliver,  Tom,  pugilist,  131. 
Once  a  Week,  Borrow  contributes  to, 

387. 
Opie,  Mrs.,  56. 
Oracle,  The,  quoted,  129. 
Orford,    Col.    Lord,   27,    31  ;     Ann 

Borrow's  letter  to,  33-34. 
Outlook,    The,    Lionel    Johnson    on 

Borrow  in,  quoted,  435-436. 
Overend  and  Gurney,  banking  firm, 

57-58. 
Owen,  Goronwy,  Borrow's  favourite 

Welsh  bard,  377-378,  407. 
Owenson,     Sydney.      See     Morgan, 

Lady. 


Pahlin,  209. 

Painter,  Edward,  pugilist,  131. 

Palgrave,  Sir  Francis,  letter  to  Bor- 
row from,  108. 

R.   H.  L,  letters  to  Mrs.  Mac- 

Oubrey  from,  431. 

Palmer,  Professor  E.  H.,  gypsy 
scholar,  232. 

Park,  Mr.  Justice,  123. 

Parker,  Archbishop,  pupil  at  Nor- 
wich Grammar  School,  71- 

Archbishop       (temp.       Queen 

Elizabeth)  descent  of  Thomas 
King  from,  16. 

Paterson,  John,  work  of,  for  Bible 
Society  in  Russia,  156. 

Penuell,  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Robins,  her 


biography  of  Leland,  quoted,  230- 

231. 
Perfrement,  Mary,  grandmother   of 

Borrow,  2,  13. 
Samuel,  grandfather  of  Borrow, 

Personal    and     Family    Glimpses    of 
Remarkable     People,     by    E.     W. 
Whately,  quoted,  385. 

Peter  Schlemihl,  translated  by  Bow- 
ring,  141. 

Petrie,    George,   correspondence    of 
Borrow  with,  336-338. 

Phillips,  Lady,  90. 

H.  W.,  portrait  of  Borrow  by, 

382. 

Sir  Ricliard,  27,  69,  100  ;  early 


days  of,  87-88;  imprisonment  of, 

88-89  ;  knighted,  94 ;  books  pub- 
lished   by,    90-95 ;     relations    of, 

with  Borrow,  96-100. 
Phrenological    Observations,    etc.,     by 

George  Combe,  46. 
Picts,  the.  Borrow  on,  336-337. 
Pilgi-im,   John,    Borrow's    visits    to, 

417-420. 
Pinkerton,  literary  hack,  88. 
Pischel,  Professor  Richard,  criticises 

Borrow's  etymologies,  344. 
Playfair,  Dr.,  387. 
Pope,  influence  of,  on  Borrow,  407. 
Pott,  Dr.  A.  F.,  gypsy  scholar,  232, 

233. 
Prayer    Book    and    Homily    Society, 

Borrow's     correspondence      with, 

176-177. 
Prize-fighting,  Borrow's  taste  for,  11, 

82,  126-132. 
Probert,   witness   against    Thurtell, 

121. 
Prothero,  Rowland  E.,  248,  249. 
Purcell,  pugilist,  130-131. 
Purland,     Francis,     companion     of 

Borrow  in  schoolboy  escapade,  73- 

75. 

Theodosius,  73-75. 

Pushkin,  Alexander,   Russian   poet, 

translated  by  Borrow,  178. 


Q 

Quarterly  Review,  The,  review  of 
Lavengro  in,  281  ;  of  Romany  Rye 
in,  347. 


448    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 


R 

RackhaMj  ToMj  79. 

Rackhams,  the,  110. 

Raising  of  Lazarus,  picture  by  Hay- 
don,  24. 

Randall,  pugilist,  130. 

Reay,  Martha,  murdered  by  Hack- 
man,  115. 

'  Recollections  of  George  Borrow,' 
by  A.  Egmont  Hake  in  AthencBum, 
quoted,  897. 

Reeve,  Mr.,  on  scene  in  Oulton 
house  after  Sorrow's  death, 
414. 

Henry,  64. 

Res  Judicatcp,  by  Augustine  Birrell, 
436. 

Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  114. 

Richmond,  pugilist,  130. 

Legh,  connection  of,  with  Bible 

Society,  155. 

Rights  of  Man,  Phillips  charged  with 
selling,  89. 

Robbards,  J.  W. ,  writes  memoir  of 
William  Taylor,  65-66. 

Robertson,  George,  47. 

Romance  of  Bookselling ,  by  Mumby, 
87. 

Romano  Lavo-Lil,  manuscript  of, 
295  ;  published  by  Murray,  404 ; 
reviews  of,  232,  233,  234,  361. 

Romantic  Ballads,  translation  from 
the  Danish  bv  Borrow,  106-111, 
112,  139,  140.' 

Romany  Rye,  The,  4,  125,  141-142, 
305 ;  appreciations  of,  228-230, 
234-235,  349,  354,  391;  autobio- 
graphical nature  of,  279-280,  285- 
286  ;  Borrow  embittered  by  failure 
of,  347;  characters  in,  343 ;  de- 
fects of  Appendix,  344-345 ;  fac- 
simile of  page  of  manuscript  of, 
346  ;  identification  of  localities  of, 
343-344 ;  philological  criticism 
of,  344  ;  preparation  of  manu- 
script of,  341;  quoted,  189  ;  re- 
views of,  347,  349. 

Ross,  Janet,  64. 

Rowe,  Quartermaster,  17. 

Rubdiydt,  Fitzgerald's  paraphrase, 
350  ;  quoted  in  original  and  trans- 
lated, .35.3-354  ;  Tennyson's  eulogy 
of,  358. 

Rye,  Walter,  119. 


St.  Petersburg,  Borrow  in,  162- 
178. 

Sampson,  John,  eminent  gypsy  ex- 
pert— extraordinary  suggestion  of, 
regarding  Borrow,  343  ;  criticises 
Borrow's  etymologies,  344. 

Sam  the  Jew,  pugilist,  130. 

Samuel,  A.  JVI.,  Lord  Mayor  of  Nor- 
wich— presents  Borrow  house  to 
Norwich,  16. 

Sayers,  Dr.,  64. 

Tom,  pugilist,  130. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  68  ;  Borrow's  pre- 
judice against,  19,  108,344;  influ- 
ence of,  on  J.  H.  Newman,  345 ; 
Taylor's  influence  on,  66  ;  interest 
of,  in  Thurtell's  trial,  121;  writ- 
ings of,  admired  by  Borrow,  344. 

Scroggins,  pugilist,  130. 

Seccombe,  Thomas,  introduction  to 
Lavengro  by,  125,  435. 

Servian  Popular  Poetry,  by  Bowring, 
140. 

Sharp,  Granville,  connection  with 
Bible  Society  of,  155. 

Shaw,  G.  B.,  his  kindness  for  the 
pugilist,  127. 

Shelton,  pugilist,  130. 

Sidney,  Algernon,  trial  of,  included 
in  Borrow's  volumes,  113. 

Sigerson,  Dr.,  Irish  scholar,  51;  suc- 
cess of  Bards  of  the  Gael  and  Gaul, 
by,  408. 

Simeon,  Charles,  connection  with 
Bible  Society  of,  155. 

Simpson,  William,  Borrow  articled  to, 
79-81;  described  by  Borrow,  80- 
81. 

Skepper,  Anne,  157,  215,  216,  219. 

Breame,  156,  157,  219. 

Edmund,  215,  219. 

Edward,  157. 

Sleeping  Bard,  The,  translation  by 
Borrow,  137;  his  mistakes  in,  357; 
refused  by  publishers,  322,  402, 
404,  406,  408,  410  ;  printed  at  his 
own  expense,  322. 

Smiles,  Samuel,  on  publication  of 
The  Zincali,  226-227. 

Smith,  Ambrose,  the  Jasper  Petulen- 
gro  oi  Lavengro,  41-45. 

Faden,  42. 

Thomas,  44.*] 


INDEX 


449 


Songs  from  Scandinavia,  translation 
by  Borrow,  13G;  prospectus  of, 
145 ;  future  publication  of,  400- 
407  ;  page  of  manuscript  of,  411. 

Songs  of  Europe,  metrical  translation 
by  Borrow,  294,  404. 

Songs  of  Scotland,  by  Allan  Cunning- 
ham, Borrow's  appreciation  of, 
109. 

Southey,  Robert,  affection  of,  for 
William  Taylor,  6G ;  on  death  of 
Taylor,  69. 

Spalding,  Frederick,  351. 

Spectator,  The,  point  of  view  of  criti- 
cism of  Borrow  of,  437  ;  reviews 
Wild  Wales,  3G7. 

Sphere,  The,  article  on  Borrow  and 
Martineau  in,  75-76. 

State  Trials,  112-113. 

Stephen,  Sir  J.  Fitzjames,  217. 

Sir  Leslie,  99. 

Stevenson,  R.  L.,  perfunctory  refer- 
ences to  Borrow  in  writings  of, 
436. 

Stoddard,  Mr.,  Burcham's  reference 
to,  17. 

Story,  A.  T.,  reminiscences  of  Bor- 
row by,  385-387. 

Struensee,  Count,  trial  of,  included 
in  Borrow's  volumes,  113. 

Stuart,  Mrs.  James,  73. 

Suffolk,  Duke  of,  64. 

Summers,  William,  184. 

Swan,  Rev.  William,  169. 


Talisman,  The,  translation  by  Borrow, 

178. 
Targum,    translation  by  Borrow,  3, 

297;  high  praise  of,  105-166,  177, 

178,    408 ;     facsimile    of  a   poem 

from,  403. 
Taylor,    Anne,    describes    Borrow's 

appearance,  293. 
Baron,  Borrow's  meeting  with, 

210. 


—  Dr.  John,  63. 

—  John,  63. 

—  Mrs.    John,    65 ;    Basil  Mon- 
tague on,  64-65. 

—  Richard,  63. 

—  Robert,  293. 
Tom,   author   of  Life   of  B.  1\. 


Haydon,  24,  25. 


Taylor,  William,  56,  70  ;  dialogue  in 
Lavengro  between  Borrow  and,  8-9, 
83-84 ;  gives  Borrow  lessons  in 
German,  81-82  ;  gives  Borrow  in- 
troductions to  Phillips  and  Camp- 
bell, 84  ;  his  love  of  paradox,  76  ; 
influence  of,  on  Borrow,  65  ; 
Harriet  Martineau  on,  66-66  ;  his 
friends  and  literary  work,  66-69  ; 
correspondence  with  Southey,  67- 
68  ;  his  testimony  to  Borrow's 
knowledge  of  German,  101. 

Taylors,  the,  at  Norwich,  55,  63-69. 

Tennyson  on  enthusiasm  for  Lycidas, 
278 ;  his  eulogy  of  FitzGerald's 
translation  of  the  Jiubdigdt,  368. 

Thackeray,  W.  M.,  Borrow's  attitude 
towards,  347,  393 ;  on  Edward 
FitzGerald,  351  ;  Hake's  severe 
reference  to,  893. 

Theodore  Watts-Dunton  :  Poet,  Novel- 
ist, Critic,  by  James  Douglas, 
quoted,  394. 

Thompson,  T.  W.,  article  of,  on 
Jasper  Petulengro,  44. 

W.  H.,357. 

Three  Generations  of  Englishwomen, 
by  Janet  Ross,  64. 

Thurtell,  Alderman,  120,  125. 

John,     82,      111  ;     trial     of— 

glimpses  of,  in  Borrow's  books, 
116-125  ;  great  authors  who  have 
commented  on  crime  of,  118. 

Timbs,  John,  111  ;  stories  told  by, 
94,  95. 

Tom  ot  Bedford,  pugilist,  131. 

Treve,  Captain,  17. 

Turkish  Jester,  The,  by  Borrow,  295  ; 
issued  by  Webber,  404. 

Turner,  Dawson,  243,  279. 

Ned,  pugilist,  130. 

Twelve  Essays  on  the  Phenomena  of 
Nature,  Phillips  anxious  to  produce 
in  a  German  dress,  96. 

Twelve  Essays  on  the  Proximate 
Causes,  Borrow  unable  to  translate 
into  German — published  in  Ger- 
man, 99, 

U 

Universal  Review,  The,  99  ;  Borrow's 
work  on,  97. 

Upcher,  A.  W.,  contributes  remin- 
iscences of  Borrow  to  the  Athen- 
aeum, 316. 


2f 


450    GEORGE  BORROW  AND  HIS  CIRCLE 


Usoz  y  Rio,Don  Luis  de,  letters  from, 
to  Borrow,  207-209. 


Valpy,  Rev.  E.,  Sorrow's  school- 
master— story  of  Borrow  being 
flogged  by,  73-78. 

Venning,  John,  work  of,  in  Russia^ 
befriends  Borrow,  lGO-161. 

V^ictoria,  Queen,  visits  gypsy  encamp- 
ment, 43. 

Vidocq,  261  ;  memoirs  of,  translated 
by  Borrow,  13(5. 

W 

Wahrheit  und  Dichtung,  opening  lines 
of,  compared  with  those  of  Laven- 
gro,  1. 

Walks  and  Talks  about  London,  94 ; 
story  told  of  Phillips  in,  95. 

Walling,  R.  A.  J.,  biography  of 
Borrow  by,  294-295. 

Walpole,  Horace,  on  Mr,  Fenn,  39. 

Wanton,  S.  W.,  letter  to  Borrow 
from,  299-300. 

Waterfield,  Mrs.,  64. 

Watts-Dunton,  Theodore,  criticism 
of  Sorrow's  work,  347,  392  ;  de 
scription  of  personal  appearance  of 
Borrow,  397-398  ;  friendship  witli 
Borrow,  317  ;  on  intimacy  between 
Borrow  and  Hake,  389-391  ;  in- 
troduction to  Lavengro  by,  435, 
436  ;  on  Sorrow's  loyalty  in  friend- 
ship, 312  ;  on  poetic  gifts  of  Bor- 
row, 406 ;  reminiscences  of  Borrow, 
398-400  ;  sonnet  written  by,  400. 

Weare  pamphlets,  120-121. 

William,  murder  of,  121,  122. 

Webber,  Borrow's  books  bought  by, 

414. 
Westminster  Review,  140. 

Whately,    Archdeacon,    description 
of  Borrow  by,  385. 


Whewell,  Dr.,  285. 

Wilberforce,  William,  connection  of, 
with  Bible  Society,  155. 

Wilcock,  Rev.  J.,  his  impressions  of 
Borrow,  338-339. 

Wild  Irish  Girl,  The,  the  publication 
of  91    92. 

Wild  Wales,  4,  6,  221,  383,  413; 
appreciations  of,  356,360,369,372- 
373  ;  comparative  failure  of,  367, 
373  ;  comparison  of,  with  Borrow's 
three  other  great  works,  376-377  ; 
facsimiles  of  two  pages  from  Bor- 
row's pocket-books,  and  of  title- 
page  of  manuscript,  365,  368  ; 
high  spirits  of,  378  ;  Lope  de 
Vega's  ghost-story  referred  to  in, 
369  ;  reviews  of,  367 ;  time  taken 
to  write,  366. 
Wilhelm  Meister,  quoted,  164. 
William  Bodham  Donne  and  his 
Friends,  Borrow  described  in,  361. 

Williams,  Lieutenant,  32. 
J.     Evan,     letter     from    Bor- 
row  to,    on     similarity    of    some 
Sclavonian  and  Welsh  words,  369- 

371. 
W^olcot,  Dr.,  90. 
Woodhouses,  the.  111. 
Wordsworth,  Borrow's  estimate   of, 

346-347. 
Wormius,  Olaus,  82. 
Wright,  Dr.  Aldis,  357,  363. 


Voung  Cottager,  The,  by  Legh  Rich- 
mond, extraordinary  voque  of,  97. 


Zincali,  The,  work  by  Borrow,  3,  4, 
42,  118 ;  reference  to  Borrow's 
travels  in,  135  ;  criticisms  of,  227- 
229  ;  number  of  copies  of,  sold, 
244  ;  editions  of,  issued,  226-227. 


Printed  by  T.  and  A.  Constabi.k,  Printers  to  His  Majesty 
at  the  Edinburgh  University  Press 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


U).    MAK5    ^S6^ 


Form  L9-Series  444 


A    .n^ 


.'1 


9 
I' 


J 


* 


VAv 


:t' 


1 


h^> 


am  n 

fi  j^  ^M  M. 

\  .Hit  ^JLUAj" 

fn  A  A 

/y\#\A 

fl'ijt 

0  .' 

^  AK,^, 

M  ^T^ 

id  ir%J 

fU  .4 

iX]Qk 

M  Si  »  ■ 

mii 

